


OUR NEW 
TESTAMENT 

HOW DID WE GET ITP 

HENRY C.VEDDER 





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Copyright 1908 by 
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Published November, 1908 



TO 

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MY COLLEAGUE IN THE SEMINARY AND IN 
THE STUDY OF THE WORD 



PREFACE 



This book has been described in advance, by 
some of the author's friends, as an answer to 
" The Formation of the New Testament," by Dr. 
George H. Ferris. Since it professes to be a his- 
torical investigation, and not a work of apolo- 
getics or polemics, it can be an answer to any other 
book only in the sense that it reaches a totally dif- 
ferent conclusion, as the result of the inquiry. In 
a few cases only, where it seemed to be erroneous 
in the statement of some material fact, or in the 
drawing of some important inference, has the 
book of Doctor Ferris been singled out for com- 
ment. In this respect it has been treated no dif- 
ferently from the writings of Harnack and Ju- 
licher, and even Westcott and Gregory, each of 
whom has sometimes erred in fact or in inference, 
as has been duly pointed out. For his own errors, 
the author bespeaks the friendly and candid se- 
verity of every reader. And he would repeat 
what he has said on another occasion : " Only by 
repeated investigation, and as frequent compari- 
son of conclusions, can the facts and their in- 
terpretation be ultimately established. It is glory 
enough for any of us to have contributed even one 
small stone to the temple of truth." 

Crozer Theological Seminary, September i, 1908. 

vii 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 



This list does not profess to be exhaustive, but only to 
give the titles of the books most consulted in the writing 
of this book, and most frequently referred to in its pages. 
They are also the books most accessible to any who may 
wish to carry their studies on the Canon further. 

Charteris, " Canonicity : a Collection of Early Testi- 
monies to the Canonical books of the New Testament." 
Edinburgh, 1880. A storehouse of fact. Anybody who has 
and masters this book, knows all that is to be known 
about the early history of the Canon. 

Ferris, " The Formation of the New Testament." Phila- 
delphia, 1907. Excellent in spirit and style, but gives a very 
incomplete view of the facts, and is singularly unfortunate 
in its generalizations. 

Gregory, " Canon and Text of the New Testament." 
International Theological Library, New York, 1907. Con- 
servative and judicious in tone, scholarly in substance, but 
in style hardly in keeping with the series of which it is a 
member. 

Harnack, " Geschichte der altchristlichen Litteratur 
bis Eusebius." Zweiter Theil: Die Chronologic Band I. 
Bis Irenaeus, Leipzig, 1897. Band II. Von Irenaeus bis 
Eusebius, Leipzig, 1904 ; " History of Dogma." Translated 
from the third edition by Neil Buchanan. Seven volumes, 
Boston, 1896-1900; "Das Neue Testament um das Jahr 
200." Freiburg, 1889. Harnack has written no book on the 
Canon, but his views are pretty fully set forth in the 
volumes and pamphlet above named. He is always learned, 
frequently brilliant, and sometimes a safe guide. He can 
never be ignored, 
viii 



BIBLIOGRAPHY IX 

Holtzmann, H. J., " Lehrbuch der Historisch-Kritisch 
Einleitung in das Neue Testament." Third edition. Frei- 
burg, 1892. Perhaps the best book from the extreme 
radical school of criticism. Pages 75-204 are devoted to the 
history of the Canon. 

Julicher, "An Introduction to the New Testament." 
Translated from the second edition by Janet Penrose Ward. 
New York, 1904. The author occupies ground midway be- 
tween Holtzmann and Harnack. He is scholarly and can- 
did, but much inclined to daring hypotheses that have slight 
support in fact. The translator is a daughter of Mrs. 
Humphry Ward. 

Scrivener, " A Plain Introduction to the Criticism of the 
New Testament." Fourth edition. Two volumes. London, 
1894. A well-known and useful handbook, containing much 
valuable information about manuscripts and early versions. 

" The Ante-Nicene Fathers," edited by A. Cleveland 
Coxe, d. d. Nine volumes. New York, 1886-1890. "The 
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers." First series. Fourteen 
volumes. New York, 1886-1890. "The Nicene and Post- 
Nicene Fathers." Second series. Fourteen Volumes. New 
York, 1890-1900. The best guide for the English reader 
through the mazes of patristic literature. The quotations 
from the Fathers in this book have usually been made 
from these editions, but have invariably been compared with 
the original, and in some cases altered to make the render- 
ing more exact. They are cited in footnotes and other 
references as ANF, PNF, and 2 PNF. 

Weiss, "A Manual of Introduction to the New Testa- 
ment." Translated from the German by A. J. K. Davidson. 
New York (n. d.). Pages 28-148 of Vol. I are devoted to 
the Canon. It is the ripe work of one of the most con- 
servative of German scholars. 

Westcott, "A General Survey of the History of the 
Canon of the New Testament." Seventh edition. London, 
1896. The most learned work in English, and in this last 
edition fully brought down to date. For the serious 



X BIBLIOGRAPHY 

student nothing could be better, but Bishop Westcott's 
most ardent admirer could hardly call this an interesting 
book. 

Zahn, " Geschichte des neuestcstamentlichen Kanons." 
Two volumes. Leipzig, 1888, 1892 ; " Grundiss der Ge- 
schichte des neuestestamentlichen Kanons." Second edition. 
Leipzig, 1904. The first conceded to be a monument of 
erudition, even by those who oppose most strongly its con- 
clusions ; the second an excellent compend for the use of 
students. Zahn is the most extreme in his conservative 
orthodoxy of German writers on the subject. 



CONTENTS 

Chapter Page 

I. Nature and Scope of the Inquiry .... i 

II. The Idea of the Apostolic Writings as 

Scripture 21 

III. The Beginnings of a Collection 55 

IV. The Voice of Heresy 93 

V. The Provisional Canon 135 

VI. The Disputed Books 169 

VII. The Rejected Books 207 

VIII. The Voice of Authority 241 

IX. The Testimony of Manuscripts and Versions 271 

X. The Tests of Canonicity 303 

XI. Conclusions . 335 

xi 



Xll CONTENTS 

Page 

Appendix — Tin: Documents in the Case 363 

I. Till: MURATORIAN FRAGMENT 365 

II. The Canon of Eusebius 368 

III. The Canon of Cyril of Jerusalem . . 369 

IV. The Canon of Laodicea 370 

V. The Canon of Athanasius 371 

VI. The Canon of the * « Apostolic Canons ' ' 372 

VII. The Canon of Amphilochius 373 

VIII. The Canon of Gregory Nazianzen . . 374 

IX. The Canon of Jerome 375 

X. The Canon of the Council of Carthage 376 

XI. The Canon of Augustine 376 

XII. The Canon of Rufinus 377 

XIII. The List of the Codex Alexandrinus . 378 

XIV. The Canon of Pope Innocent I . . . . 378 

XV. The Canon of Pope Gelasius 379 

XVI. The Ratification of the Trullan 

Council. ... 379 

XVII. The Canon of Pope Eugenius IV . . . 380 



NATURE AND SCOPE OF THE INQUIRY 



I 



WHEN at the Leipzig Disputation of 15 19, 
the turning-point of the Reformation, 
Doctor Eck, of Ingolstadt, the champion of the 
Roman Church, asserted the supreme authority of 
the pope in matters of doctrine, Luther retorted 
that not the pope but the Scriptures are the su- 
preme authority. " Neither is it in the power of 
the Roman pontiff to frame new articles of faith," 
said Luther, " but only to judge according to 
those already framed. Nor can any faithful 
Christian be compelled to anything beyond the 
Holy Scriptures, which constitute, properly 
speaking, the divine law, unless a new and ap- 
proved revelation be added. Aye, by divine law 
we are forbidden believing anything except what 
is proved either from Scripture or by manifest 
revelation." At the time Luther uttered these 
words, he still believed himself to be a loyal 
member of the Roman Catholic Church, but he 
had unconsciously announced the formal principle 
of Protestantism. 

As the Reformation progressed, the importance 

3 



4 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

of this principle was more and more clearly recog- 
nized, until Chillingworth gave it that epigram- 
matic form which has since had so wide circu- 
lation, " The Bible and the Bible only is the 
religion of Protestants." A more carefully defined 
statement of the same idea found a prominent 
place in the Westminster Confession : " The 
whole counsel of God, concerning all things 
necessary for his own glory, man's salvation, 
faith, and life, is either expressly set down in 
Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence 
may be deduced from Scripture: unto which 
nothing at any time is to be added, whether by 
new revelations of the Spirit, or traditions of 
men." This was inserted without change in 
the Savoy Declaration of the Congregational 
churches, in 1658, and in the Confession of the 
English Baptists, of 1688, widely known in the 
United States as the Philadelphia Confession. 
Since statements identical in substance are con- 
tained in all Protestant Confessions, this may be 
taken as the common standard of orthodoxy to 
this day. 

This assertion of the supreme authority of the 
Scriptures has always been believed to permit a 
reasonable liberty of opinion concerning the doc- 



NATURE AND SCOPE OF THE INQUIRY 5 

trine of their inspiration. Neither the nature, the 
method, nor the extent of inspiration is defined 
in any Articles of Faith set forth by a Protestant 
or evangelical body; and while on the whole a 
" high " doctrine of inspiration has been regarded 
as more correct, or at least as " safer," any doc- 
trine has been tolerated (though with some re- 
luctance at times) that did not seriously impair 
the religious authority of the Bible. Even the 
vexed question of errancy or inerrancy in the 
Scriptures has never been authoritatively deter- 
mined in any creed, or been made a test of fellow- 
ship in any denomination. The suggestion of 
errors in the Scriptures has undoubtedly been 
looked upon with much disfavor, and those who 
maintain that errors exist have often been called 
heretical; but this has been the opprobrious lan- 
guage of opponents in controversy, not the well- 
considered condemnation of a recognized eccle- 
siastical tribunal. 

Until quite recently it has not been clearly per- 
ceived that there is a question lying back of that 
which has hitherto absorbed attention — a funda- 
mental question, a question therefore of the first 
importance and of compelling interest. Before 
we can ask, What is the authority of Scripture? 



6 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

or, at any rate, before we can answer the ques- 
tion, we must ask and answer the deeper ques- 
tion, What is Scripture ? The Reformers * did not 
feel the full stress of this prior question because, 
in their contest with the Romanists, both parties 
recognized the same New Testament, both alike 
admitted its authority. The exact point of dif- 
ference then was, Has tradition equal authority 
with Scripture, and must we accept teachings 
of the Fathers and decisions of Councils that rest 
on tradition, not on the Scriptures ? On this issue 
the Reformation battle was fought. 

Luther was the only one among the Reformers 
to appreciate the importance of the question, 
What is Scripture ? But Luther raised this ques- 
tion, not so much because of its fundamental im- 
portance, as because he found it difficult to recon- 
cile his doctrine of justification by faith alone 
with the Epistle of James, which seemed to him 
to teach justification by faith and works. Instead 
of seeking a better exegesis of both Paul and 
James, which would have shown their essential 

*We are speaking, be it remembered, of the New Testament ex- 
clusively. The Reformers did raise the question, What is Scrip- 
ture? with regard to the Old Testament, and the result of the 
ensuing controversy in the Reformation period was the rejection 
as apocryphal of the Greek books that since the version of Jerome 
had been accepted in the Catholic Church as Scripture. 



NATURE AND SCOPE OF THE INQUIRY 7 

harmony, he too easily accepted the theory of an 
irreconcilable conflict between them, and for him- 
self rejected James altogether, calling it an epistle 
of straw (ein recht strohren Epistel). Having 
begun thus by excluding one book of the New 
Testament, he went on to reject others, notably 
the Apocalypse. But while, for his private use 
and edification, Luther thus reconstructed the 
New Testament according to his notions of what 
it should be, he did not subject all the writings 
to critical scrutiny, and he laid down no princi- 
ple by which another could certainly determine 
whether a given book should be in our New 
Testament or not. The other Reformers treated 
these ideas of Luther as mere vagary or eccen- 
tricity, and let them go at that. 

But we cannot to-day pass by indifferently or 
wave aside as of no practical consequence this 
fundamental question, What is Scripture? Cir- 
cumstances have forced it on our attention and 
compel its serious consideration. The scholar- 
ship of the age is much occupied with it, and even 
the plain people wish to know what scholars are 
thinking and saying among themselves about the 
Bible. Then too, the Reformation polemics are 
not the polemics of to-day. We used to say to 



8 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

the Romanist, " We cannot accept the authority 
of the Church; we stand upon the teaching of 
the New Testament." And having said this, we 
flattered ourselves that we had settled the matter. 
But we are now somewhat dismayed to find that 
when we have said this, the discussion, so far 
from being ended, is only begun. For the Ro- 
manist at once retorts, " The Church existed be- 
fore the New Testament; the Church gave you 
the New Testament and guarantees its authority ; 
in accepting the New Testament you accept the 
authority of the Church, and every time you ap- 
peal to Scripture you logically appeal to that 
Church which gave it to you." And some of 
our own scholars are assuring us that the Church 
of Rome is historically justified in her contention ; 
that she did give Christendom the New Testa- 
ment, and guaranteed its authenticity and au- 
thority; that it is the historic fact that Rome 
made the Canon, and therefore the validity of the 
Canon is just as great as the authority of Rome, 
and no greater. 

If this is true, then, humiliating as the confes- 
sion may be, it must be acknowledged that Prot- 
estants have been wrong from the beginning. In 
appealing from the authority of Rome to the 



NATURE AND SCOPE OF THE INQUIRY 9 

Scriptures they were making a false issue — in 
the very appeal they unwittingly acknowledged 
the authority that they intended to repudiate. 
Shall we deny the right of Rome to declare what 
is the true interpretation of a passage of Scrip- 
ture, and admit her right to decide for us the 
whole question of what is Scripture? That is 
not merely illogical, it is suicidal. If it is 
historic truth that Rome made the Canon, the 
Protestant claims are completely undermined. 
To accept Rome's authority in the fundamental 
question, What is Scripture? and then cavil 
about her authority to answer, What does Scrip- 
ture mean? is surely vo strain out the gnat and 
swallow the camel. 

Nevertheless, if it is the historic fact that Rome 
made the New Testament Canon, and Protestants 
have in reality accepted it on her sole authority, 
the fact must be acknowledged and the conse- 
quences must be faced. We must before all 
things receive the truth and follow whither she 
leads. No respect for Protestant tradition, no 
pride of consistency, no reluctance to confess 
a long-upheld error, shall prevent us from the 
hearty and loyal acceptance of the truth. That is 
what we daily pray the Holy Spirit to teach us, 



IO OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

that is what we love and honor, to that we will, 
like the fathers whom we revere, be faithful even 
unto death. But — is this the truth ? Aye, there's 
the rub! The question must receive more care- 
ful consideration than has been given to it by the 
Protestant world before men are ready to answer. 

What is Scripture? is therefore the question 
of questions to-day. The answer that has been 
given for generations no longer answers. It 
is not enough to say, The New Testament, for 
at once the further question arises and will 
not down, Where and how did we get our New 
Testament? And this question must be an- 
swered. If no satisfactory reply is forthcoming, 
many will soon find their confidence in the au- 
thority of the New Testament seriously impaired. 

It was once a common opinion — of course only 
among the ill-informed — that the New Testament 
had always existed as we now know it, one book. 
There was a time when any attempt to amend the 
text, even of the English version, was thought 
by very good people to be incurring the evils de- 
nounced by the Revelator on any who should add 
to or take from " the words of the prophecy of 
this book " — " this book " meaning to the igno- 
rant reader the whole Bible in his hands, from the 



NATURE AND SCOPE OF THE INQUIRY II 

first verse of Genesis to the final word of Reve- 
lation. That time has happily passed. The Sun- 
day-school has made Christian people familiar 
with some cardinal facts about the Bible. The 
least scholarly among us no longer supposes that 
the New Testament existed as a collected body of 
writings in the days of the apostles. The most 
ignorant among us now knows that these twenty- 
seven writings that we call the New Testament 
were composed in different places, at different 
times, for different purposes, by many different 
writers; that a period of probably forty or fifty 
years intervened between the first writing and 
the last; and that subsequently these scattered 
writings were gathered into one collection. So 
much is generally known. But When ? and How ? 
and Where ? As to that the average Christian has 
hitherto known little, but he is beginning to 
concern himself much. 

It has also become generally known that these 
twenty-seven books which compose our New Tes- 
tament were not the entire literature of the early 
years of Christianity — perhaps not all the litera- 
ture of the apostolic age even. It is known that 
doubts were expressed in early times regarding 
the genuineness and authority of some of the 



12 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

books in our New Testament. These things are 
in the air; they are found in the newspapers and 
periodicals that our plain people are reading. 
This knowledge causes, not exactly doubt, but 
perplexity. People would like to know something 
more about this early Christian literature, some- 
thing about the reasons why part of it was ad- 
mitted into the New Testament, while part of 
it was not. In short, they are curious to know 
how and why it came about that just these books, 
and no others, were accepted as the Christian 
Scriptures. 

The list of books that compose our New Testa- 
ment is called the Canon, and the process of 
gathering the books into a collection is called the 
formation of the Canon. The word is much used, 
but seldom defined, and this fact often leads to 
confusion. Nothing is so efficient a preventive 
of crude thinking, or so certain a protection 
against misunderstanding, as a precise definition. 
" Canon " is a word that is properly defined by its 
history. It is used several times in the Pauline 
Epistles in its ordinary sense of a rule or stand- 
ard (2 Cor. 10 : 13, 15, 16; Gal. 6 : 16). 
When the Christian writers of a later time begin 
to speak of the " canonical " Scriptures, they 



NATURE AND SCOPE OF THE INQUIRY 1 3 

mean those writings that had been accepted as the 
rule, norm, standard of the Christian faith. The 
alternative and earlier phrase is, " the canonized 
Scriptures " ; and both phrases describe a definite 
collection of writings, approved as an authorita- 
tive rule. 

We may still further define, by distinguishing 
the idea of the Canon from certain related ideas. 
Canonicity means simply the fact of recognition 
as one of the books of this authoritative collec- 
tion. A book may have all the other qualities of 
books that belong to the Canon and yet lack can- 
onicity. For example, the Epistle of James could 
not be said to possess canonicity until the fourth 
century. Long before that it was conceded by a 
large part of the Church to be inspired, but as its 
addition to the collection was not yet generally 
recognized, it was not canonical. A book may 
have recognized value, to a high degree, and not 
be canonical, as was the case with the Shepherd 
for a long time. A book may have a notable 
history, and close relations with canonical books, 
and not be canonical, like the gospel of Nicode- 
mus. A book may have become canonical in 
spite of the fact that its origin and early history 
are unknown, as did the Epistle to the Hebrews. 



14 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

The history of the Canon is therefore something 
quite different from the history of the books of 
the New Testament. Each book has an inter- 
esting history, but when the facts concerning 
each separate book have been learned and all are 
brought together, we have at best only materials 
for the history of the Canon. The history of the 
Canon, then, is the tracing of the process by 
which there grew up a well-defined collection of 
books that came to be accepted throughout the 
Christian churches, East and West, as the rule 
of Christian faith and of Christian life. 

We have defined the Canon as the collection of 
writings approved as the authoritative rule of 
Christian faith. Approved by whom? Ap- 
proved when? Approved how? These are the 
crucial questions, and when we have found a 
satisfactory answer to them we shall know all 
that is essential about the formation of the Canon. 
By a " satisfactory " answer is meant, not an 
answer that satisfies tradition, or prejudice, or a 
pet theory, but an answer that exactly accords 
zvith all the known facts. The questions at issue 
must be decided by fact, and sound reasoning 
based on facts, not by authority or appeals to 
passion. 



NATURE AND SCOPE OF THE INQUIRY 1 5 

" All the known facts!" We must carefully 
investigate and discover what they are; we must 
bravely and candidly face them when found. We 
have nothing to fear from such inquiry; it is 
not truth that is dangerous, but falsehood. If 
the Bible is what we hold it to be, the word of 
God, it will bear the most searching examina- 
tion, and emerge from the test with a triumphant 
vindication of its claim. No inquiry about the 
Scriptures should be deprecated or feared, pro- 
vided it is fair in spirit, thorough in its search for 
the whole truth, and impartial in its weighing of 
evidence. Truth is the only object worthy of a 
scholar's pursuit, as it is the only attainment capa- 
ble of satisfying a rational mind. In any case, 
inquiry is inevitable; to object to it is futile, to 
oppose it is both foolish and dangerous. For by 
opposing fair inquiry we make a humiliating con- 
fession of the weakness of our cause, our secret 
dread lest scrutiny of the nature and authority of 
Scripture should result in discrediting it. We 
should remember that, in the long run, nothing 
can be discredited but that which is unworthy of 
credit. 

A few words may be properly added on the 
method to be pursued in this inquiry. This is 



1 6 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

an inductive study, but the deductive method can- 
not be wholly excluded. It will even seem to 
some readers that too large a place is occupied 
in some of the following chapters by deductions 
from assumed facts and principles. The same 
thing will be found to be true of all books on the 
history of the Canon, for it is a necessity of the 
case. Our information regarding the beginnings 
of the Christian churches, and of Christian in- 
stitutions, from the days of the apostles to the 
close of the second century, is very fragmentary 
and incomplete. The surviving literature is 
scanty, and what remains is not a literature of 
fact. We are obliged to glean painfully, from 
several thousand pages of patristic writing, a few 
bits of knowledge, piece these together as best 
we may, and bridge over the yawning chasms be- 
tween them with the most plausible conjectures 
that we can supply. The chief difference between 
writers on the Canon will be found to consist in 
the degree of caution, the sobriety of judgment, 
with which this absolutely necessary work is 
done. It is perfectly legitimate, therefore, for 
the adequate interpretation of our incomplete 
facts, to ask ourselves, What might we fairly 
expect a priori would occur in certain circum- 



NATURE AND SCOPE OF THE INQUIRY 1 7 

stances, given a known point of departure and the 
ordinary workings of human nature? If in such 
cases, the few facts that we possess agree ex- 
actly with our deductions, we may rest in a 
tolerably safe conclusion. But ordinarily, we 
shall proceed by induction from the facts estab- 
lished by competent testimony. 

Hypothesis is a useful factor in all scientific in- 
quiry ; the inductive method cannot be practically 
applied without its aid. The imagination has also 
its indispensable use in historical investigation. 
Both, however, should be kept under rigorous con- 
trol, as implements of investigation, and by no 
means should either be suffered to dominate the 
inquiry. Every hypothesis regarding the Canon 
should be subjected to three tests: first, is it ra- 
tional and credible per sef secondly, does it take 
into account all the known facts? thirdly, does it 
offer an adequate explanation of all the facts ? A 
hypothesis that successfully endures these three 
tests is entitled to acceptance as probably true — 
the degree of probability varying with the nature 
of the facts, and sometimes amounting to a moral 
certainty. But just as the chauffeur who has been 
driving his automobile at a speed that seems to an- 
nihilate distance has found his powerful machine 



1 8 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

brought to a sudden standstill by a little nail that 
has punctured his tire, so many a hypothesis that 
seemed to sweep everything before it in triumph 
has been ignominiously wrecked by a single hard 
fact. 

One other word about the method of the book. 
An attempt has been made in good faith to give 
every material testimony in the writings of the 
Fathers, not in paraphrase or summary, but in 
the writer's own words, together with a reference 
to the source of the quotation. This has been 
done, even when it involved somewhat extended 
quotation, and a consequent interruption in the 
course of the narrative. It is believed that no 
relevant passage of any importance has been 
omitted ; certainly none has been omitted because 
of any difficulties that it presented. As a result, 
the reader will have in his possession, when he 
has finished reading this book, the original 
materials for the history of the Canon, not the 
present history merely. He will be in a position 
to judge whether the author has treated the 
materials fairly, and whether the conclusions 
drawn from them in the book are justified. The 
longer sources are gathered in the Appendix, and 
only brief quotations from them are made in the 



NATURE AND SCOPE OF THE INQUIRY 19 

text. This is a guarantee of fairness that every 
author ought willingly to give, and that all 
readers and students may at all times be trusted 
to appreciate. 

There are other books that have for their 
purpose the telling of the story of the Canon, but 
most of them are written for scholars, not for 
plain people ; and, if they were comprehensible by 
a plain man, they are so voluminous that the 
very sight of them frightens him away. To tell 
this story within reasonable limits, and so that the 
average man can easily understand it, and yet tell 
all that needs to be told ; to tell the story with an 
accuracy that will deserve the approval of schol- 
ars, yet with an element of interest that will gain 
the attention of busy men, is the purpose of this 
book. It is an ambitious attempt; it may easily 
fail of success. 

To determine when and where we got our 
Canon does not completely answer the question, 
What is Scripture? It will tell why certain 
books, and those only, came to be accepted as 
Scripture, and so far will give us grounds to de- 
cide why we should accept them as Scripture. 
Hence nobody need expect — or fear — to find dis- 
cussed in these pages the inspiration, the authen- 



20 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

ticity, and the authority of the Scriptures, ex- 
cept so far as their authority is necessarily con- 
nected with the history of the Canon. The dis- 
cussion will be strictly limited by the title of the 
book. 



II 



THE IDEA OF THE APOSTOLIC 
WRITINGS AS " SCRIPTURE " 



II 



EVERY reader of the New Testament is fa- 
miliar with the fact that the collection of 
books known to us as the Old Testament is de- 
scribed by the apostolic writers as Scripture. 
This word is used in a technical sense, implying 
a special character of sacredness and authority 
in these writings. It was generally believed, 
among Jews and Christians alike, that this special 
character of the Scriptures was due to the fact 
that their writers " spake from God, being moved 
by the Holy Spirit" (2 Peter 1 : 21). The 
reading of these Scriptures, and the explaining 
of them to the people, formed a regular part of 
the Sabbath services in the Jewish synagogues. 
This was, in truth, the most important part 
of the service. The synagogue, unknown when 
the canonical books of the Old Testament were 
written, arose after the exile in response to the 
need for the instruction of the Israelites in the 
law. This was the primary function of the 
synagogue, and worship was secondary. Jose- 
phus makes this plain when he says : " Not once 

23 



24 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

or twice or more frequently did our lawgiver 
command us to hear the law, but to come together 
weekly, with the cessation of other work, to hear 
the law and to learn it accurately " (Apion ii. 7). 
Indeed, the Old Testament itself gives a prece- 
dent for such instruction, in the gathering of the 
people after the return from captivity and the 
reading of the law to them by Ezra and others. 
" And they read in the book, in the law of God, 
distinctly; and they gave the sense, so that they 
understood the reading" (Neh. 8:8). In the 
New Testament we find plainly recognized this 
teaching of the law as the main function of the 
synagogue, and Jesus constantly availed himself 
of this opportunity for instructing the people 
during his ministry in Galilee. 1 The reading of 
the law, and later of the prophets also, and in- 
struction based on such reading, was the chief 
thing for which the synagogue existed, and 
wherever the Jews were there was a synagogue: 
" For Moses from generations of old hath in 
every city them that preach him, being read in 
the synagogues every sabbath" (Acts 15 : 21). 
When the disciples of Christ began to preach 

1 Matt. 4 : 23; Mark i : 21; Luke 4 : 15, 31; 6:6; 13 : 10; 
John 6 : 59; 18 : 20. 



THE IDEA OF SCRIPTURE 25 

the glad tidings of salvation through him, they 
began in the synagogues. They made the law 
and the prophets the basis of their teaching, for 
these testified of the Messiah whom they pro- 
claimed. The first preaching was wholly like 
that of Jesus to the two disciples whom he met 
on the way to Emmaus when, " beginning from 
Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to 
them in all the scriptures the things concerning 
himself" (Luke 24 : 27). The appeal was to 
the written word of the Old Testament, and it 
is recorded as the result of apostolic preaching at 
Bercea that the Jews there were " examining the 
Scriptures daily whether these things were so " 
(Acts 17 : 11). 

When the disciples thus made began to gather 
themselves into assemblies of their own, and the 
Christian churches became clearly differentiated 
from the Jewish synagogues, it was only what 
we ought to expect, in view of the Jewish training 
of most of them, that they should continue the 
methods of the synagogue, and particularly this 
custom of the public reading and exposition of 
the Scriptures. The " reading " to which Timo- 
thy was exhorted to give heed (1 Tim. 4 : 13) 
was without doubt the public reading of the law 



26 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

and prophets. That the Psalms were early used 
in Christian worship, probably being sung an- 
tiphonally (Eph. 5 : 19), as they were intended 
to be used, is plain from several allusions in Paul's 
epistles (Col. 3 : 16; cf. Mark 14 : 26; Matt. 
26 : 30). Since they believed that these Scrip- 
tures testified of their Lord, it was inevitable that 
all writers of the apostolic age should continually 
appeal to the Old Testament as authoritative — in 
every dispute, a passage of Scripture was final 
for confirmation. And accordingly, wherever 
we find the Scriptures mentioned in the New Tes- 
tament, and in the literature of the sub-apostolic 
age, we are to understand the law and the 
prophets. The word " Scripture " is never ap- 
plied to their own writings by the Christian 
writers of the first century. They did not place 
their own writings on an equality with the law 
and the prophets, nor claim for them an equal 
authority. 

That is to say, no such formal claim was made. 
But the Apostle Paul did virtually claim such au- 
thority in his letters to the churches, especially to 
the Corinthians, when he distinctly says, " I 
think I have also the Spirit of God," and at one 
time says of his counsels, " not I, but the Lord," 



THE IDEA OF SCRIPTURE 2J 

while at another he is scrupulous to say, " I, not 
the Lord" (i Cor. 7 : 40, 10, 12). And no 
writer could claim the highest authority as the 
prophet of God in more impressive words than 
are used at the close of the Revelation : " I tes- 
tify unto every man that heareth the words of 
the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add 
unto them, God shall add unto him the plagues 
that are written in this book; and if any man 
shall take away from the words of the book of 
this prophecy, God shall take away his part from 
the tree of life, and out of the holy city, which 
are written in this book." And if none of the 
other writers of the first century is quite so em- 
phatic in the assertion of his authority to speak 
for God, that claim is implicit in such writings 
as the Epistle to the Hebrews and the Epistles of 
James and Peter. We find in them the same tone 
that so impressed the Jews in the teaching of 
Jesus (Matt. 7:28, 29) : "The multitudes were 
astonished at his teaching; for he taught them 
as one having authority, and not as their scribes." 
The disciples of Christ caught something of his 
manner and method, as we feel when we read 
their writings. 

It is often said that the churches read the 



28 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

Epistles of Paul in their public worship long 
before they regarded them as Scripture; but 
can that assertion be made good? It is a fact of 
record, to be sure, that we find mention of the 
reading earlier than an explicit assertion that the 
epistles are Scripture, but that is a very uncer- 
tain ground for an inference of so grave a char- 
acter. No Father tells us all that he knew or 
thought, and that facts are found in a certain or- 
der in patristic literature by no means invariably 
proves that things happened in that precise order. 
May we not go further and say that, in all proba- 
bility, the exact reverse of the above inference 
is true — that the idea of the scriptural authority 
of the epistles preceded their customary public 
reading? For the apostles spoke as ambassadors, 
the representatives of Christ, as well as the wit- 
nesses of his resurrection. Whatever authority 
Christ himself had, he was supposed by the 
churches to have deputed to the apostles. The 
claim to be directed by the Spirit of Christ is 
implicit in all the apostolic writings. 

Nothing less than this can account for or jus- 
tify their tone of spiritual, not official, authority. 
Paul does not write like a Catholic bishop, as 
Athanasius or Augustine wrote to the churches in 



THE IDEA OF SCRIPTURE 20, 

their jurisdiction, or even as Cyprian wrote. His 
tone is different even from that of Ignatius. He 
writes, not as a bishop, but as an apostle. And 
from the first the churches must have received 
his letters as he wrote them, recognizing in them 
the voice of Christ. The churches continued the 
use of the Old Testament from habit; they read 
the apostolic writings because in them they heard 
the voice of their Master, their supreme authority, 
speaking through the writer. And so soon as it 
occurred to them to ask which were the more au- 
thoritative, the law and the prophets, or the Gos- 
pels and Epistles, they promptly gave the first 
place to the latter, though still retaining the 
former because of their testimony to Christ. 

The exceptional character of the Gospels and 
Epistles of Paul we find distinctly recognized in 
the earliest Christian literature, outside of the 
Canon ; and a considerable part, if not the whole, 
of those writings that were finally canonized were 
from the first regarded as standing in a class by 
themselves. We do not find them always form- 
ally quoted by the earliest Christian writers, nor 
appealed to as an authority equal to the Old Tes- 
tament, as came to be the later usage, but we find 
evidence of a certain familiarity with their con- 



30 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

tents that colors all the thought and expression of 

the early Fathers. 

Clement of Rome illustrates this condition of 

things perfectly. As bishop of the church of 

M ^ _ Rome — and his letter shows that 
2L 2>» 97 

" bishop " was, in his time, no 

more and no other than " presbyter " — he writes 
a letter to the church at Corinth. The Corin- 
thians, we gather from the letter, had been treat- 
ing their presbyters with scant respect, and had 
even deposed some of them from office without 
good cause. Clement remonstrates with them, 
and exhorts them to a more Christian course 
of conduct. Twice he quotes from " the words 
of the Lord Jesus." The first quotation is : " Be 
ye merciful, that ye may obtain mercy; forgive 
that it may be forgiven to you ; as ye do, so shall 
it be done unto you; as ye judge, so shall ye be 
judged; as ye are kind, so shall kindness be 
shown to you ; with what measure ye mete, with 
the same it shall be measured to you " (chap. 
13). The second quotation is: "Woe to that 
man! It were better for him that he had never 
been born, than that he should cast a stumbling- 
block before one of my elect. Yea, it were better 
for him that a mill-stone should be hung about his 



THE IDEA OF SCRIPTURE 3 1 

neck and he should be sunk in the depths of the 
sea, than that he should cast a stumbling-block 
before one of my little ones " (chap. 46). 

The first quotation is substantially identical 
with Matt. 5:7; 6:12-15; 7:2, and Luke 6: 
36-38, but it is not verbally identical with either. 
The second passage corresponds in the main to 
Matt. 18:6; 26:24; Mark 9:42, and Luke 
17:2, but it is not an exact quotation of any pas- 
sage in our present Gospels. There are several 
possible explanations of these discrepancies. 
Clement may not have had before him the text of 
the Gospels ; he may have quoted from memory, 1 
being satisfied to give the general sense of the 
words of Jesus. Or, he may have had a different 
text from any that has survived. Or, again, he 
may have had a different collection of the sayings 
of our Lord from either of the canonical Gospels. 
For our present purpose, it is not important to 
choose between these possible explanations; in 
any event, he was quoting " the words of the 
Lord Jesus " as final authority, which is all that it 
concerns us just now to know. 

1 A recent popular novel, in its concluding paragraph, shows how 
trusting to memory leads to curious metamorphoses of the text: 
" Maxwell . . . quoted a text from the Scripture in a low voice — 
'she suffered much, so much shall be forgiven of her!'" The 
writer doubtless supposed that he was citing accurately Luke 7 : 47. 



32 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

As to the Epistles, Clement makes distinct ref- 
erence to Paul's letters to the Corinthian church, 
and repeatedly quotes from them and paraphrases 
them. Chap. 49 of his letter is a plain imita- 
tion of 1 Cor. 13. He is thoroughly familiar with 
the Epistle to the Hebrews ; he quotes 1 : 2, 3 
accurately, and borrows many brief phrases to 
adorn his sentences. He knows the Epistle to 
Titus, to the Ephesians, and the first to Timothy. 
And this sentence, though not an exact quotation, 
could never have been written save by a care- 
ful student of Romans : " And we too, being 
called by his will in Christ Jesus, are not justified 
by ourselves, nor by our own wisdom, or under- 
standing, or godliness, or works that we have 
wrought in holiness of heart; but by that faith 
through which, from the beginning, almighty 
God has justified all men; to whom be glory for 
ever and ever. Amen" (chap. 32; cf. Rom. 3 : 
20, 28, etc.). Nor could this well have come 
from one who had not carefully read the First 
Epistle of John — " The blood of Jesus Christ 
gained for the whole world the offer of the grace 
of repentance" (chap. 8 ; cf. I John 1:7; 
2 : 20). 

Clement's use of the apostolic writings shows 



THE IDEA OF SCRIPTURE 33 

that he put them in a class by themselves, but he 
seldom quotes from them with the exact verbal 
accuracy deemed essential in our times. Rather, 
his letter is full of echoes of Gospels and Epistles, 
which testify eloquently to the care with which he 
had studied them, and the honor in which he held 
them. This is exceedingly significant, as Clement 
wrote about a. d. 97, say about the time of the 
composition of the Apocalypse and perhaps a dec- 
ade before the Gospel of John was written. That 
the writings later held to be canonical were al- 
ready so highly esteemed, is a fact that many 
writers have passed over too lightly. It is true 
that Clement never cites the apostolic writings 
as Scripture, with the formula that he uses for 
the Old Testament, " it is written," or " it says," 
but he does not seem to have esteemed their au- 
thority as really less than that of the law and the 
prophets. The words of the Lord Jesus, in par- 
ticular, he regards as the highest possible 
authority. 

We must remember, in estimating the signifi- 
cance of Clement's use of the New Testament 
writings — and this remark applies equally to all 
the early Fathers — that he did not write for the 
purpose of telling us which of these books he had 



34 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

and valued, and that he probably had no need to 
tell his contemporaries. What we learn from 
him is purely incidental information, and we have 
no right to assume that he tells us all that he 
knew. Inferences of the most positive nature are 
often drawn from the silence of a Father, which 
accurate reasoning must repudiate. If a Father 
quotes from a book, that proves his acquaintance 
with it. But if he fails to quote from another 
book, that usually proves nothing. Only in a 
rare case are we entitled to infer that silence is 
equivalent to ignorance. When a later Father, 
like Basil, besprinkles his pages with quotations 
from every other canonical book, and omits all 
mention of the Apocalypse, that omission may no 
doubt be taken to be significant. It cannot prove 
ignorance, in his case, but it may be equivalent 
to denial of the canonicity of the book. 

The Didache, or Teaching of the Twelve Apos- 
tles, which the majority of scholars now assign 
to the year ioo or earlier, shows a considerable 
advance in accuracy of quotation. Many verses 
are cited from the Gospels of Matthew and Luke 
with almost exact verbal accuracy. The varia- 
tions are so slight, in most cases, that the same 
English sentence will accurately translate both 



THE IDEA OF SCRIPTURE 35 

forms. In many other cases, there is substantial 

correctness of quotation, and a large number of 

brief phrases are identical with our M _ 

B* 5>. 100 
present Greek text of those Gospels, 

such as, " bless those that curse you," and " give 
not that which is holy unto dogs." Although a 
number of ingenious theories have been advanced 
to explain the discrepancies in these quotations, 
it is morally certain that the compiler (or com- 
pilers) of this document had before him (or 
them) our canonical Gospels of Matthew and 
Luke. The variations from the text of the evan- 
gelists are not difficult of explanation, but the cor- 
respondences with our present text seem inexpli- 
cable on any other hypothesis. For it is evident 
that when one writer cites accurately the words of 
another, he must have been acquainted with them ; 
while a slovenly quotation may be the result, not 
of ignorance, but of carelessness. 

There are also in the Didache certain signifi- 
cant echoes of the Gospel of John, which was 
probably written at about the same time. Such 
phrases as " Holy Father," used in prayer to 
God (and found only in John iy : n); "the 
vine," applied to Christ, and used only in John 
15 : 1-8; and "perfect her [i. e., the church] in 



36 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

thy love," a phrase found only in 1 John 4: 17 — 
though scarcely quotations in the technical sense, 
could hardly have been used by a writer who was 
not familiar with the ideas and diction peculiar 
to John. 

What for our present inquiry is most signifi- 
cant is that the words of Jesus, the instruction 
of the apostles, and the Old Testament are cited 
freely as occasion demands, as if they were of 
equal authority, and alike demanded the faith 
and obedience of all Christians. The word 
" Scripture," or the formula " it is written " is 
used in neither case. Authority is assumed for 
the words cited, but not formally asserted. 
Among the readers addressed there was nobody 
at all likely to question the authority of any of 
these words. 

We find the same phenomena in the letters of 
Ignatius and Polycarp. There is no occasion 
to plunge here into the interminable controversy 
that has been waged over the genuineness of the 
Ignatian letters. Scholars are now pretty well 
agreed in accepting the shorter Greek recension 
of seven letters as probably genuine. If not writ- 
ten by Ignatius himself, they must have been 
fabricated soon after his death. For our present 



THE IDEA OF SCRIPTURE $7 

purpose it matters little who was their author, 
since in any event they must have been written 
in the first half of the second century, and they 
are a valid witness to the way in which Christians 
of that time looked at the writings of the apostles. 
If they were written by Ignatius _, _ .^ 
himself, their date cannot well be 
later than 120, since his martyrdom cannot with 
good reason be placed later than that. Indeed, the 
only tradition about his death is that he suffered 
in the reign of Trajan, who died in 117. 

Ignatius, in his letter to the Ephesians, refers 
in unmistakable terms to Paul's letter to the 
same church : " Ye are initiated into the mys- 
teries of the gospel with Paul . . . who in all his 
epistle makes mention of you in Christ Jesus " 
(chap. 12). He shows unmistakable familiarity 
with First Corinthians : " Let my spirit be ac- 
counted as nothing for the sake of the cross, 
which is a stumbling-block to those that do not 
believe, but to us salvation and life eternal. 
Where is the wise man? where is the disputer? " 
(chap. 18; cf. 1 Cor. 1 : 18, 20.) Besides a 
few such formal quotations, there are numerous 
references to other apostolic writings and echoes 
of the Gospels, such as the following : " The last 



38 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

times are come upon us" (1 John 2 : 18) ; " the 
wrath to come" (Matt. 3:7); "the tree is 
made manifest by its fruit" (Matt. 12 : 33); 
" that we may be his temples " (1 Cor. 6 : 19) ; 
" shall not inherit the kingdom of God " (1 Cor. 
6:9, 10) ; " for this end did the Lord suffer 
the ointment to be poured upon his head " (John 
12 : 7). And in the letter to the Romans occurs 
another exact quotation from the Gospel : " For 
what shall a man be profited if he gain the whole 
world, but lose his own life " (Matt. 16 : 26). 

The most definite and precise statement of the 
attitude of Ignatius to both Testaments is in his 
letter to the Philadelphians : " When I heard 
some saying, If I do not find it in the ancient 
Scriptures, I will not believe the Gospel ; on my 
saying to them, It is written, they answered me, 
That remains to be proved. But to me Jesus 
Christ is in the place of all that is ancient; his 
cross and death and resurrection, and the faith 
which is by him, are undefiled monuments of 
antiquity; by which I desire, through your 
prayers, to be justified " (chap. 8). 

The question of canonicity, however, was not 
yet so much as mentioned, and in one case Igna- 
tius quotes (according to Jerome) from a lost 



THE IDEA OF SCRIPTURE 39 

Gospel of the Nazarenes : " When, for instance, 
he came to those who were with Peter, he said 
to them, ' Lay hold, handle me, and see that I am 
not an incorporeal spirit ' " {To the Smyrneans, 
chap. 3), which is a variant reading of Luke 

24 : 39- 

Nothing illustrates better the change that took 
place in the treatment of the apostolic writings, 
than a comparison of the shorter recension of the 
Ignatian letters with the longer — a half-century 
later at least. In the shorter recension, the formal 
and exact quotations are few, not more than one 
or two in a letter, and the other allusions are 
confined for the most part to brief phrases or 
clauses. The chief thing that makes the later 
recension longer, is that these brief references, 
these echoing phrases have been expanded into 
long and exact quotations; and where there is 
neither quotation nor allusion in the shorter 
form, passages more or less apposite have been 
carefully sought out and inserted. In other 
words, take the longer recension and erase from 
it the quotations from the New Testament, and 
there is left substantially the shorter text! The 
fact is eloquent. We are shown, as by an object- 
lesson, how the appreciation of the apostolic writ- 



4-0 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

ings as Scripture was growing in the second 
century. 

We find in the letter of Polycarp to the Philip- 
pians (not later than 150), as we might expect, a 
definite progress in precision of 
quotation, marking accurately the 
increased esteem in which the apostolic writings 
had come to be held. This letter, of about twenty- 
five hundred words, contains a dozen citations from 
the New Testament that are either verbally exact 
or nearly so, and a score or two of brief phrases, 
such as: "God is not mocked" (Gal. 6:7); 
" we shall also reign with him " (2 Tim. 2 : 12) ; 
" let not the sun go down upon your wrath " 
(Eph. 4 : 26). The writings from which Poly- 
carp quotes are: the Gospels of Matthew and 
Luke, the Acts, Romans, both Epistles to the Cor- 
inthians, Galatians, Ephesians, both letters to the 
Thessalonians, and both to Timothy. Besides 
these, the first Epistle of John is quoted or un- 
mistakably referred to not fewer than eleven 
times. Direct mention is made (chap. 3) of 
Paul's letter to the Philippians, and there are sev- 
eral possible allusions to this epistle, but no formal 
quotation from it. 

It is interesting to note that in one case Poly- 



THE IDEA OF SCRIPTURE 41 

carp quotes from Tobit, precisely as he does from 
Psalms and Isaiah. Here is an unconscious testi- 
mony that not merely the New Testament Canon, 
but the Old Testament as well, was still unsettled. 1 
Polycarp does not call any of his authorities 
" Scripture," but he evidently treats them as such, 
and as equally authoritative. The idea that the 
apostolic writings are Scripture, and are generally 
conceded to possess that character and authority, 
must be assumed to be latent in the consciousness 
of all Christians by the year 150, in order to ex- 
plain the tone and manner in which the Fathers 
cite from their text, and still more from the way 
in which they have saturated their minds with 
the ideas and vocabulary of the New Testament. 
Nothing had yet occurred to call forth a formal 
statement of this latent idea, and it therefore 
remained latent, but not the less influential. It 
has not yet been definitely decided what and how 
many writings shall be so accepted — the time for 

1 This is an investigation of the Canon of the New Testament 
alone, and ought not to be complicated by the admission of matters 
pertaining to the Old Testament Canon. But it may be pointed out, 
as additional illustration of the uncertain limits of the Old Testa- 
ment Canon, that Jesus himself quoted from the Wisdom of God, 
according to Luke, n : 49, 50; that Jude and Second Peter quote 
from the book of Enoch; that Irenaeus quotes at length from the 
prophecy of Baruch (Adv. Haer., v. 35). These instances might be 
greatly multiplied, but are sufficient to make clear the fact. 



4^ OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

raising that question had not arrived — but that 
a group of writings claiming apostolic origin and 
sanction is now received as equally authoritative 
with the Old Testament cannot well be doubted. 
It took not more than half a century for the de- 
velopment of this idea and its general acceptance. 

We see the final step taken and the formal ac- 
knowledgment made in the so-called Epistle of 

« ^ ,™ Barnabas. Though it is now cer- 
tarn that this is not a writing of 
the apostolic age, and that the Barnabas of the 
Acts can therefore have had no connection with 
it, it was long believed to be from his pen, and on 
that ground was widely accepted as Scripture. 
It cannot be dated much, if any, later than the 
year 150, and is therefore a witness of about the 
same time as Polycarp's letter. The greater part 
of the quotations in the first section of Barnabas 
are from the Old Testament, and this makes all 
the more significant the citation at the close of 
chap. 4, with the formula " it is written," of our 
Lord's words in Matt. 22: 14: "Many are 
called, but few are chosen. " This is the first in- 
stance in a Christian writer of the formal recogni- 
tion of a New Testament writing as Scripture, 
in the same sense as the Old Testament. It 



THE IDEA OF SCRIPTURE 43 

differs, however, only in this explicit formality, 
from the quotations in Polycarp, and even in 
Ignatius and the Didache, all of which, as we 
have seen, actually treat the New Testament as 
Scripture, without calling it by that name. 

That these are no rash assertions, or unwar- 
ranted inferences, becomes evident when we study 
the Apologies of Justin, called the Martyr. They 
are little later than Barnabas; in fact, the first 
Apology is probably a substantially contempora- 
neous document. In these writings the quota- 
tions from the New Testament are M _ „ _ 

21. H>. 150 
at once more restricted and more 

extensive than in any previous literature of the 
period. They are more restricted, in that the 
apologetic purpose of Justin leads him to com- 
pare the teachings of Christ with those among 
the heathen who professed to teach the way of 
life, and so his quotations are wholly from the 
Gospels. They are more extensive in that his 
citations are more numerous and elaborate than 
those in any preceding writer. The quotations 
from the Gospel of Matthew, and the clear al- 
lusions to it, in all the Apostolic Fathers, amount 
only to forty-nine, while Justin alone has forty- 
three. The Gospel of Luke is more or less clearly 



44 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

cited by the Apostolic Fathers sixteen times, while 
Justin quotes from it, with equal or greater clear- 
ness, nineteen times. The full discussion of Jus- 
tin's quotations, however, belongs to the next 
chapter. 

In the works of Irenaeus we find the idea of 
the scriptural character and authority of the 
apostolic writings held as a doctrine of the 
Catholic Church. His great treatise " Against 
Heresies " has survived only in an imperfect 
Latin version; but it was composed about 185, 

and the imperfections of the extant 
&. JS>* 185 

form do not appreciably mar its 

value as a witness in our matter. Throughout 
the treatise, Irenaeus (who was bishop of Lyons, 
and was a martyr there in the fiery persecution 
under Marcus Aurelius, about 190) speaks, as of a 
thing uncontroverted and incontrovertible among 
Christians, of the writings of evangelists and 
apostles as constituting Scripture along with the 
law and the prophets (1. 3, 6; 8, 1; 9, 1). 
He speaks of the " sacred Scriptures " as in- 
cluding the parables (11. 27, 1). He says that 
heretics are " confuted from the Scriptures," and 
immediately quotes from the writings of Paul (2 
Cor. 2 : 6) to confute them. Against Cerinthus 



THE IDEA OF SCRIPTURE 45 

and those Gnostics who would reject the Gospel 
of John he argues that " it is not possible that the 
Gospels can be either more nor fewer in number 
than they are," and proceeds to give various 
mystical reasons for this number : there are four 
zones of the world, and four principal winds, so 
it is fitting that the church should have four pil- 
lars. The " winged creatures " of Isaiah typified 
the gospel, and as the creatures were quadriform, 
so should the gospel be quadriform. God has 
given four covenants to the race, hence there 
should be four Gospels. The reasoning of Ire- 
naeus we may find fantastic and inconclusive, not 
to say childish, but this defect does not invalidate 
his implicit testimony to this fact: in his day 
to reject any one of our four canonical Gospels 
was reckoned the mark of a heretic. 

But perhaps the most interesting, and certainly 
the most significant, thing to be gleaned from 
Irenasus is his idea of the relation of the Scrip- 
tures to the church. There has been, he contends, 
a perpetual succession of bishops in the churches 
founded by the apostles, especially in the church 
" founded and organized at Rome by the two 
most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul " (in. 
3, 1). The church has been made the sole de- 



46 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

pository of truth (in. 4, 1). True knowledge 
(as distinguished from the false gnosis of the 
heretics) consists in the doctrine of the apostles. 
It is to be discovered through reading the Scrip- 
tures, without falsification, and a diligent expo- 
sition in harmony with the Scriptures (iv. 
33, 8). To the question that would naturally 
suggest itself, What are the Scriptures ? Irenaeus 
does not directly reply by giving a list, but quotes 
with manifest approval the words of " a presby- 
ter," whom some editors have conjectured to be 
Polycarp : " And then shall every word also seem 
consistent to him, if he for his part diligently read 
the Scriptures in company with those who are 
presbyters in the Church, among whom is the 
apostolic doctrine as I have pointed out " (iv, 

From these scattered remarks of Irenaeus it 
is clear that his doctrine, reduced to systematic 
statement, was about as follows: The Catholic 
Church, distinguishable by its regular succession 
of bishops from the apostles, was made by the 
apostles the sole depository of their teaching, i. e., 
the truth. It is the ancient and trustworthy wit- 
ness to the doctrine of the apostles, and the cus- 
todian of their writings. These writings are 



THE IDEA OF SCRIPTURE 47 

authenticated by being publicly read by the pres- 
byters. Whoever should accept as Scripture 
those writings, and those only, thus approved by 
public reading in the churches, might be sure that 
he had the truth. Here we have stated for the 
first time the germinal idea of the Canon, and 
also its genetic principle: the Canon consists of 
those writings that have been approved by the 
practice of the churches in having them publicly 
read by the presbyters. The usage of the 
churches is thus definitely stated by Irenaeus to 
be the test of what does and what does not con- 
stitute Scripture. 

While this usage of the New Testament writ- 
ings as Scripture thus prevails from the first 
among Christian writers, and the assertion of 
their character as such begins about the middle 
of the second century, we do not find, and should 
not expect to find, any doctrine of the inspiration 
of these writings in the early Fathers. The im- 
plied basis of their acceptance as authoritative is, 
of course, a belief that they are in some special 
sense the word of God, and not the word of man 
alone, but we should naturally expect the accept- 
ance first and the dogmatic justification of it 
later. That is precisely what we do find. 



4-8 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

The first writer to speak explicitly on this ques- 
tion is Justin. In his first Apology 1 he asserts 
inspiration as a fact, but is content to treat the 
question with great brevity : " But when you hear 
the utterances of the prophets, spoken as it were 
personally, you must not suppose that they are 
spoken by the inspired themselves, but by the 
divine Word who moves them." In the " Exhor- 
tation to the Greeks," which was formerly attrib- 
uted to Justin, but is now believed to be the 
work of Tatian, his pupil, the subject is treated at 
greater length : " For neither by nature nor by 
human conception is it possible for men to know 
things so great and divine, but by the gift which 
then descended from above upon the holy men, 
who had no need of rhetorical art, nor of utter- 
ing anything in a contentious or quarrelsome- 
manner, but to present themselves pure to the 
energy of the divine Spirit, in order that the 
divine plectrum itself, descending from heaven, 
and using righteous men as an instrument and 
like a harp or lyre, might reveal to us the knowl- 
edge of things divine and heavenly." 2 This 
teaching is not in so many words applied specific- 
ally to the New Testament, but the apostolic 

*x. 36. 2 c 8. 



THE IDEA OF SCRIPTURE 49 

writings are quoted on equal terms with the 
"prophets," and it is evident that Tatian held 
the same views regarding their inspiration. 

In the last decades of the second century the 
doctrine of inspiration of the apostolic writings 
becomes clear and unmistakable. Irenaeus not 
only quotes them repeatedly as Scripture, but ex- 
plicitly declares that we should be " most properly 
assured that the Scriptures are indeed perfect, 
since they were spoken by the Word of God and 
his Spirit." * He argues vehemently, if not 
cogently, that one God was the author of both 
Testaments — this in opposition to certain Gnos- 
tics who maintained that the Old Testament is not 
of divine origin and authority, but was inspired, 
at least in part, by the Demiurge. It had already 
come about that the authority of the Old Testa- 
ment was more in need of assertion and defense 
among Christians than the New. 

Theophilus of Antioch (180), an Eastern con- 
temporary of Irenaeus, is not less explicit : " But 
men of God, carrying in them a holy spirit or 
borne along by the Spirit {nveofxaroipopot) and 
becoming prophets, being inspired and made wise 
by God, became God-taught and holy and right- 

1 Adv. Haer., ii. 28, 2. 
D 



50 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

eous." * And again: " Moreover, concerning the 
righteousness that the law enjoins, confirmatory 
utterances are found both with the prophets and 
in the Gospels, because they all spoke inspired by 
one Spirit of God." 2 Elsewhere he calls John 
" one of the spirit-bearing men," and quotes from 
the Gospel as of higher religious authority than 
the Old Testament. It is plain therefore that the 
East and the West were fully agreed on this 
matter considerably before the close of the second 
century. 

It would seem also that there was early de- 
veloped as " high " a doctrine of inspiration as 
that held by modern theologians. Gaius, rather 
earlier than later, had said, " For either they do 
not believe that the divine Scriptures were dic- 
tated by the Holy Spirit, and thus are infidels; 
or they think themselves wiser than the Holy 
Spirit, and what are they then but demoniacs? " 3 
This is surely verbal inspiration in its extreme 
form. But so rigid a theory of the Spirit's action, 
while held by some of the Fathers, cannot be said 
to have gained general acceptance. The figure 
of the musician and his instrument, used by Ta- 

1 Ad Antol., ii. 9. z Ibid., iii. 12; ii. 22. 

'Eusebius, H. E., v. 28. 



THE IDEA OF SCRIPTURE 5 1 

tian in the passage already cited, became the 
favorite illustration of patristic literature, and 
stands in lieu of a more formal statement of the 
doctrine. 

So Athenagoras, writing about 177, remarks: 
" We have for witnesses of the things we appre- 
hend and believe, prophets, men who have pro- 
nounced concerning God and the things of God, 
guided by the Spirit of God. And you too, will 
admit . . . that it would be irrational for us to 
cease to believe in the Spirit from God, who moved 
the mouths of the prophets like musical instru- 
ments. . . Prophets who, lifted in ecstasy above 
the natural operations of their minds by the im- 
pulses of the divine Spirit, uttered the things 
with which they were inspired, the Spirit making 
use of them as a flute-player breathes into a 
flute." * Clement of Alexandria makes a dif- 
ferent and striking use of music to illustrate the 
agreement of the writers of Scripture : 2 " You 
may take music in another way, as the ecclesiasti- 
cal symphony at once of the law and the prophets, 
and the apostles along with the Gospel." And his 
faith in the sufficiency, not to say inerrancy, of 
these writings is sufficiently evidenced by this re- 

1 " Plea for Christians," c. 7, 9. 2 Strom., vi. 11. 



52 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

mark : * " But those who are ready to toil in the 
most excellent pursuits, will not desist from the 
search after truth, till they get the demonstration 
from the Scriptures themselves." It is worth 
while to note also that Clement is the first to 
apply to the New Testament Scriptures and their 
writers the term afterward so widely used in theo- 
logical literature for inspiration, God-breathed 

With the third century the doctrine of inspira- 
tion must be regarded as finally established as a 
fundamental Christian teaching. In the writings 
of Tertullian, Origen, Cyprian, Hippolytus, it is 
so prominent that no reader of these Fathers can 
fail to be impressed by it, and quotations would be 
superfluous. But we have also an unconscious 
testimony to the estimate placed on the Scrip- 
tures, by the beginning in the second century of 
their systematic study and the writing of com- 
mentaries on them. If we may believe tradition, 
the Gnostic Heracleon wrote a commentary on 
John's Gospel about 170. The method of inter- 
pretation that was adopted from the first, also 
points unmistakably in the same direction. All 
the early commentators used the allegorical 

1 Strom., vii. 16. 



THE IDEA OF SCRIPTURE 53 

method, and as Sanday well says, 1 " Only in a 
book that is regarded as possessing a peculiar 
sacredness and authority is the attempt likely to 
be made to elicit a sense from the words other 
than the obvious and literal." The Fathers con- 
tinually accuse heretics of perverting Scripture, 
but could there be more serious perversion than 
the allegorizing of the orthodox Fathers them- 
selves? Let any one read Origen on John, for 
example, and declare in favor of orthodoxy — if 
he can. 

1 " Inspiration," p. 39. 



Ill 

THE BEGINNINGS OF A COLLECTION 



Ill 



EARLY Christian literature is on the one 
hand the product of the Christian life, and 
on the other the product of the Christian Church. 
The study of that literature in all its phases is 
inseparable from the study of the gradual de- 
velopment of the Christian life and of those ec- 
clesiastical institutions in which it found expres- 
sion. The investigation of the Canon in par- 
ticular must be regarded as part and parcel of 
the history of the Catholic Church, which was 
developed in the second century. 

And, in examining the literature of the second 
century, as has already been hinted, it is impor- 
tant that we do not expect too much. It was not 
an age of great literary activity among Christians, 
but of missionary effort. Of the extent and fruit- 
fulness of that missionary activity, Harnack has 
lately furnished impressive evidence. 1 Men were 
too much occupied with the oral proclamation of 
the gospel at first to give much attention to the 

1 Die Mission und Ausbreitung des Christenthums in den ersten 
drei Jahrhunderten, Leipzig, 1902; English translation in two vol- 
umes, London, 1904, entitled " The Expansion of Christianity." 

57 



58 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

composition of homiletic writings, and the time 
for doctrinal treatises had not yet come. What 
Papias tells us of his preference for oral tradi- 
tion over the written word was doubtless char- 
acteristic of the age. 1 And we can easily under- 
stand how men should have preferred listening 
to those who had been actual companions and 
disciples of the apostles to reading about the 
same things in books. Besides, the books were at 
first few and not accessible to all. 

Many lamentations have been uttered over the 
lost treasures of the Christian literature of this 
period. For example : " It may have contained 
many childish, many grotesque, many foolish 
things. . . But it must have contained passages 
of inspired beauty and grandeur, and these the 
world can ill afford to lose." 2 These regrets do 
not seem to be justified by anything found in the 
literature that has survived. We search in vain 
through the Fathers of this period for " pas- 
sages of inspired beauty and grandeur." Writers 
deceive themselves even more than they mislead 

1 " If then any one came, who had been a follower of the elders, 
I questioned him in regard to the words of the elders. . . For I did 
not think that what was to be gotten from the books would profit 
me as much as what came from the living and abiding voice." 
Quoted by Eusebius, H. E., iii. 38. 4. 

2 " Formation of the New Testament," Ferris, p. 214. 



THE BEGINNINGS OF A COLLECTION 59 

others by such unfounded remarks. Whether we 
estimate the value of lost books from the frag- 
ments of them that have survived in the form of 
quotations by the Fathers whose writings we have, 
or by the character of the few specimens that have 
been recently recovered, the conclusion is war- 
ranted that the cream of the early literature has 
been preserved, and that the recovery of the lost 
portion would gratify curiosity far more than ex- 
tend knowledge or edify the church. As for any 
supposed invaluable books that have vanished 
without leaving a trace, the existence of such 
books is an unproved hypothesis, and a most 
improbable one. 

That which remains, we may conclude, will 
afford a fair test of the spiritual value of what has 
been lost. No reader who has learned for him- 
self the spiritual barrenness of books like the 
Shepherd, once regarded by no inconsiderable 
portion of the church as Scripture, and the in- 
finitesimal increment of value added by the recent 
discovery of documents like the Didache and the 
Gospel of Peter, can be easily persuaded that the 
world would be made wiser or better, or that a 
single hungry soul would be fed by the recovery 
of every lost writing of the second century. That 



GO OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

we have suffered any irreparable loss, scholars 
will be slow to believe, and still slower to assert. 
Let us comfort ourselves, and no longer mourn the 
loss of these purely imaginary treasures of Chris- 
tian antiquity, and save our tears for some real 
sorrow — such as failure to understand correctly 
the literature that is actually in our possession. 

There is every reason to believe that the Gos- 
pels were not the earliest apostolic writings to be 
read in public, but rather the Pauline Epistles. 
So far as we know, the letters of Paul to the 
churches were the earliest Christian literature. 
Ramsay has plausibly argued that, in a literary 
age like the first century, the process of reducing 
the oral gospel to writing must have begun the 
very year of the crucifixion of Jesus — fragmentary 
records of sayings and doings at first. 1 When 
Luke wrote there were in existence " many " such 
attempts, and this can hardly be restricted to the 
Gospel of Mark and another unknown " source," 
which are all that critics can now definitely trace 
in the third Gospel. But however plausible this 
reasoning may be, it is purely a priori, and is un- 
supported by a single positive fact. Not a line of 
such writing has survived, nor even a certain 

1 " Letters to the Seven Churches," pp. 4-6. 



THE BEGINNINGS OF A COLLECTION 6 1 

reference to any such composition. We repeat: 
so far as our knowledge goes, Paul's letters are 
the earliest Christian literature. 

The conjecture that these letters were the first 
Christian writings to be publicly read, does not 
depend for credibility merely on the supposed fact 
that they were composed several decades earlier 
than any Gospel, but upon the unquestionable fact 
that they were in large part written for the ex- 
press purpose of being publicly read in the churches 
to which they were sent, while the Gospels dis- 
close no such apparent purpose. Indeed, the 
Gospel of Luke, from its dedication to the " most 
excellent Theophilus " would seem to have been 
intended rather for private instruction than for 
public or liturgical reading. But reading to the 
whole church is evidently the intent in all the 
apostolic letters, and especially in those of Paul. 
That was the only practicable way, so far as we 
can see, by which their contents could be com- 
municated to the whole church. 1 The importance 
of these letters, and the value that would be from 
the first attached to them, would lead most nat- 

1 Not only do the general contents of the Epistles necessarily 
imply the public reading of them to the churches, but the salutations 
in the final chapters of Romans, for example, could have been con- 
veyed so well in no other way (Rom. 16 : 5, 22, 23). 



62 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

urally to their careful preservation and repeated 
public reading. 

In the case of several Pauline letters, we can 
get out of the region of conjecture into that of 
solid fact. At the close of the first letter to the 
Thessalonians, the apostle says, " I adjure you 
by the Lord, that this epistle be read unto all 
the holy brethren" (i Thess. 5 : 2j). He re- 
gards the matter of the public reading as so im- 
portant that he uses the formula of the Jewish 
courts for administering an oath. In the letter 
to the Colossians we find this : " And when this 
epistle hath been read among you, cause that it 
be read also in the church of the Laodiceans; 
and that ye also read the epistle from Laodicea " x 
(Col. 4 : 16). Here not only the public reading 
of letters, but their interchange between churches 
is provided for. It is true that many scholars 
of high authority dispute the Pauline authorship 
of the letter to the Colossians. Supposing them 
for the moment to be right, then at the very least 
we have here testimony from the early part of the 
second century that the interchange and public 

1 Whether this " epistle from Laodicea " is a lost letter of the 
apostle, or is to be identified with some surviving epistle, e. g., 
Ephesians, is a question long debated and still unsettled. See the 
commentaries of Ellicott and Lightfoot on this passage. 



THE BEGINNINGS OF A COLLECTION 63 

reading of Paul's letters were already established 
practices, 1 which is the very thing we are just 
now most concerned to know. 

Other letters of Paul had this encyclical char- 
acter, notably Galatians, which is explicitly ad- 
dressed to all the churches of a large region ; and 
this holds good whatever view we take of the 
meaning of " Galatia " in Paul's day. It is highly 
probable that the letters to the Ephesians and 
Philippians — especially the former, which in some 
early Fathers and MSS is called the Epistle to 
Laodicea — had also this encyclical character. 
Other New Testament writings were doubtless 
written for public reading. That such is the case 
with the Apocalypse is clearly indicated by 1 : 3, 
as well as by the fact that its introductory sec- 
tion consists of letters to seven representative 
churches of Asia. 

The originals of letters so valuable and so 
highly prized as these certainly were would be 
jealously preserved by the churches that received 
them, and copies would be made for other 
churches; or, if the original autograph was sent 

1 On the facilities in the Roman empire for the circulation of 
letters see Ramsay, " Letters to the Seven Churches," pp. 23-34. 
To show how churches passed letters about in the early centuries, 
see Eusebius, H. E., v. 25. And compare Gregory on the Canon, 
P. 159. 



64 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

to another church as a loan, a copy would be 
made before its return. In this way churches 
would come, in no long time, to possess collections 
of Paul's letters. The desire to make these col- 
lections complete would soon follow, and would 
lead to search for additional copies, until each 
important church would have what it considered 
a complete collection. By the end of the first 
century we may fairly suppose this process to be 
nearly or quite completed, and the churches must 
by that time have been virtually agreed as to what 
constituted a complete collection of the Pauline 
letters. 

This account of the process is hypothetical, 
but the result is not hypothesis; it is fact. And 
the hypothesis concerning the process is con- 
firmed at several points by evidence. Polycarp's 
letter to the Philippians shows that the Asiatic 
churches of his day eagerly sought letters of other 
distinguished men than apostles. He sends with 
his letter those of Ignatius, " as many as we had 
by us." * The making of collections by the 
churches is a custom already well established by 
1 50, and of course must have begun much earlier. 

1 Polycarp to the Philippians, ch. xiii. 1. 2. Eusebius has several 
references to this custom as being continued in later times, H. E., 
iv. 23; v. 25. 



THE BEGINNINGS OF A COLLECTION 65 

When Clement wrote to the Corinthians (97), 
and Ignatius to the Philippians (117), both made 
reference to the possession by these churches of 
Paul's letters to them, and alluded to the custom 
of publicly reading the letters. 

Nor should we look on this collecting of letters 
by the churches as something exceptional or ab- 
normal, peculiar to the Christian communities. 
The very reverse was the case. It was not un- 
common for collections of letters to be made, as 
we learn from classical literature. Soon after 
the death of Aristotle, $22 b. a, a collection of 
letters purporting to be his was published in 
Athens. It turned out to be a rather clever 
forgery, but there would have been no such at- 
tempt at fabrication had there not been even then 
an established custom of collecting and preserving 
the letters of distinguished men. The letters of 
Cicero, familiar to every schoolboy (as Ma- 
caulay delighted to say), are another case in 
point Paul's letters were especially worthy of 
collection and preservation by the early Christian 
communities, apart from any question of inspi- 
ration. They were genuine letters, personal 
communications to particular churches, the un- 
studied outpourings of the apostle's heart, but 



66 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

they contained discussions of the fundamental 
principles of Christianity and practical directions 
about the Christian life, that were of universal 
application and would be valuable information 
and counsel for all churches, as well as for those 
directly addressed. 

Not only is our conjectural history of the first 
collections of apostolic writings confirmed by the 
few patristic statements recoverable, but the fa- 
miliarity with these writings shown by the earliest 
Fathers, as set forth in the preceding chapter, 
points to the same conclusions. For a time the 
collections of the churches would be practically 
the only collections — there could be few complete 
private copies, perhaps none — and the fact that 
the earliest Fathers show such intimate ac- 
quaintance with the ideas and phraseology of the 
apostles, even when they do not formally quote, 
warrants the conclusion that they gained this 
knowledge largely, if not wholly, through hear- 
ing the apostolic writings publicly read. Ignatius 
and Polycarp, not to say Clement, must either 
have owned or have heard often read, a practi- 
cally complete collection of the Pauline Epistles, 
so intimate is the knowledge shown by them of 
nearly all the letters. The East, therefore, seems 



THE BEGINNINGS OF A COLLECTION 67 

to have taken the lead in this making of collec- 
tions, as we might perhaps have expected; and 
the first traces of such collections are found in 
Asia Minor and Egypt. 1 

Of course, this public reading of the Pauline 
Epistles would at first be occasional and sponta- 
neous, not a matter of rule, but such reading would 
tend to pass into a regular, liturgical use. Such 
was the process by which all the liturgy of the 
church developed. There is a very suggestive 
passage in a letter of Dionysius of Corinth, 
quoted by Eusebius. 2 Writing to the Roman 
Church, he says, " To-day we have passed the 
Lord's holy day, in which we have read your 

epistle. From it, whenever we M _ m • 

XL 2>. 170 
read it, we shall always be able to 

draw advice, as also from the former epistle, 
which was written to us through Clement." 3 
Now if a letter of Clement's would be thus pre- 
served by the Corinthian church, and was fre- 
quently read at its services on the Lord's Day, 
much more may we conclude that a letter of Paul's 
would be prized and read. Another sentence 

3 Harnack, " Dogma," Vol. II., p. 42, note, recognizes this. 
2 H. E., iv. 23. 11. 

3 Compare a similar testimony to Hegesippus to the preservation 
at Corinth of Clement's letter, also preserved by Eusebius (iii. 16). 



68 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

quoted by Eusebius from the same Dionysius is 
quite as significant. Complaining that some of 
his own letters have been garbled by false 
teachers, he adds : " It is not wonderful then that 
some have attempted to adulterate the Lord's 
Scriptures also (t<ov xopcaxwu ypcuptov) t since they 
have formed designs against writings that are 
of less account." From which we are fairly 
entitled to infer that " the Lord's Scriptures " 
were honored above all others and existed in 
collections that were jealously guarded, in spite of 
which they had been corrupted by heretics, i. e., 
their text had been mutilated or perverted. The 
allusion is probably to the heresy of Marcion, 
whose relation to the Canon will be discussed in a 
later chapter. A little later than Dionysius, Ter- 
tullian 1 distinctly implies that this custom had 
been continuous to his day : " Run over the 
apostolic churches, in which the very thrones of 

_ _ the apostles are still preeminent in 

B. 2>. 200 . . , . 

their places, in which their authen- 
tic writings are read, uttering the voice and repre- 
senting the face of each of them severally." 

But if the collection of Epistles began first, col- 
lections of the Gospels must have been begun soon 

1 De Praescr. Haer., 36. 



THE BEGINNINGS OF A COLLECTION 69 

after they were written. We have this solid, un- 
questionable fact to begin with, that Tatian wrote 
his Diatessaron not long after the middle of the 
second century. He had before him, and used 
in his work, our four canonical Gospels, and this 
presupposes the recognition of these Gospels as a 
collection from about 125. Not less than a gen- 
eration can be allowed for such a collection to 
acquire a currency and an esteem that would in- 
spire Tatian with the wish and purpose to har- 
monize them into a single continuous narrative. 

We probably cannot push the date further back 
than this — indeed, the gathering of the Gospels 
into a collection could hardly be supposed, with 
good reason, to have occurred much earlier than 
that. Of course, the existence of the Gospels 
separately at an earlier date is another question, 
though even of that direct external testimony, 
apart from the quotations we have already ex- 
amined, is not very satisfactory. Some of the 
citations from the earlier Fathers will not bear 
the interpretations that have been offered, or 
warrant the inferences that have been drawn. 
Ignatius, 1 for example, says : " I stand by the 
gospel as by the flesh of Christ, and by the apos- 

1 Ad Phil., 5. 



JO OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

ties as by the college of the presbyters of the 
churches. I love the prophets also, because they 
hope in Christ, and they too have themselves 
proclaimed the gospel." The latter clause shows 
clearly in what sense " gospel " is to be under- 
stood in the former — it is the oral gospel rather 
than the written, or the content rather than the 
form. In no event can it be admitted to prove 
the existence in the time of Ignatius of written 
Gospels, still less of a collection. 

In the Epistle to Diognetus, the reference to 
a written record seems a little clearer, almost 

_ _ ._. certain in fact: * " Thenceforth the 
21 ♦ Jo/* 130 

fear of the law is sung, the grace of 

the prophets is recognized, the faith of the Gos- 
pels is established, the tradition of the apostles 
is guarded, and the grace of the church leaps for 
joy." This may be taken, with slight hesitation, 
as the first unmistakable mention of the Gospels 
as books, distinct from the gospel as a message. 
Even when Justin, 2 who writes several decades 
later, uses such phrases as, " as it is written in 
the gospel," and " which are called the gospel," 
it is far from certain that he means any definite 
book. He speaks elsewhere of several " Me- 

*c. II. 2 Dial. c. Try. ioo; Apol. i : 66. 



THE BEGINNINGS OF A COLLECTION J\ 

moirs " 1 of the apostles, and he evidently chooses 
this word in writing to a heathen emperor as 
less technical and more certain to be understood 
than the Christian term " Gospel " ; but in such 
passages as those cited above, he probably means 
the content of those " Memoirs " — the gospel 
truth, their total teaching — and not the books 
themselves, or any of their number. 

Few matters pertaining to patristic literature 
have been more hotly debated, and few are still 
in greater uncertainty, than the question, What 
and how many of our present Gospels did Justin 
have and use? Our only grounds for deciding 
the question are the quotations in his writings, 
and these we shall now briefly examine. The un- 
certainty that still obtains regarding this ques- 
tion would have been much less, were not so many 
critics prone to make daring hypothesis take the 
place of painstaking investigation. It throws 
great light on the problem to know accurately 
what was Justin's habit of mind with regard to 
quotation, and we fortunately have an exact test 
of his literary conscience in his profuse quota- 
tions from the Septuagint. These sometimes 

1 anonvrifj.ovevii.aTa, a word familiar to every student of the classics, 
as the name that Xenophon chose for his recollections of his master, 
Socrates. 



72 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

exactly agree with the Septuagint text that has 
come down to us, but in more cases they surpris- 
ingly differ from that text. 

A critical analysis of these differences shows 
that of eighty-nine such citations, twenty-three 
(about twenty-five per cent.) are substantially 
accurate, the differences being only such as varia- 
tion of text would satisfactorily explain. Thirty- 
three give the substance of the passage quoted, 
with material variations in the form; eight are 
adaptations, and eight are combinations of two 
or more separate passages into one. Seventeen 
passages are quoted more than once (nearly 
twenty per cent, of the whole), some as many as 
three times, and almost never twice exactly alike. 
We find also that Justin quotes as from Isaiah a 
passage found in Jeremiah, and vice versa; he 
says Jeremiah in one case where he should say 
Daniel; and Zephaniah for Zechariah. 

These facts may be taken to prove to a demon- 
stration that Justin habitually quoted from 
memory — a memory unusually full-stored and re- 
tentive, and as verbally accurate as we have a 
right to expect, since he nearly always gives the 
sense of a passage, though seldom its precise 
verbal form, but a memory that at times plays 



THE BEGINNINGS OF A COLLECTION 73 

him strange tricks. Gregory very pointedly and 
judiciously says of Justin, " He quotes the Greek 
Old Testament in such a way that if it were the 
text of the Gospels many an investigator would 
be inclined to call it a quotation from an unknown 
Gospel." * Evidently then, we are not to expect 
from this Father exact quotations, such as can be 
secured only by careful reference to a manuscript, 
even if one were available to him when he wrote. 
Turning now to Justin's citations from the 
Gospels, we find precisely the same phenomena. 
He does not duplicate New Testament passages 
as freely as Old, but in at least one case he quotes 
a verse twice with material verbal differences, 
though with no alteration of the sense. His va- 
riations from the text of our Gospels are of the 
same nature as those already found in citations 
from the Septuagint, showing the persistence of 
his mental habits and their uniform working. 
The nature of these variations will be made 
clearer by a careful comparison of a few char- 
acteristic cases : 



Justin 

I came not to call the 
righteous, but sinners to re- 
pentance. 

1 Canon, p. 89. 



New Testament 
I came not to call the 
righteous, but sinners to 
repentance (Matt. 9 : 13). 



74 



OUR NEW TESTAMENT 



Justin 
If ye love them that love 
you, what new thing do yc? 
for even fornicators 1 do 
this. But I say unto you, 
Pray for your enemies, and 
love them that hate you, 
and bless them that curse 
you, and pray for them that 
despitefully use you. 

To him that smiteth thee 
on the one cheek, offer also 
the other; and him that 
taketh away thy coat or 
cloak forbid not. And 
whosoever shall be angry is 
in danger of the fire. And 
everyone that compelleth 
thee to go with him a mile, 
follow him two. And let 
your good works shine be- 
fore men, that they, seeing 
them, may glorify your 
Father who is in heaven. 



New Testament 
For if ye love them that 
love you, what reward have 
ye? Do not even the publi- 
cans the same ? ( Matt. 5 : 46) . 
Love your enemies, do 
good to them that hate you, 
bless them that curse you, 
pray for them that despite- 
fully use you ( Luke 6 : 27, 28) . 

To him that smiteth thee 
on one cheek offer also the 
other; and from him that 
taketh away thy cloak with- 
hold not thy coat also 
(Luke 6 : 29). 

Every one that is angry 
with his brother . . . shall 
be in danger of the hell of 
fire (Matt. 5 : 22, 2$). 

And whosoever shall com- 
pel thee to go one mile, go 
with him twain (Matt. 5 : 41 ) . 

Even so let your light 
shine before men, that they 
may see your good works, 
and glorify your Father who 
is in heaven (Matt. 5:16). 



1 This curious variation suggests that Justin may have had a dif- 
ferent reading in his text from any now known. The textus receptus 
has here reKiavai, while Westcott and Hort and most other critics 
read iSviKot, It is at least possible that Justin's reading, nopvol, 
is not a mere slip of memory, but has behind it contemporary MS 
authority. He does not often use words utterly different from our 
present Greek text, but often substitutes synonyms and different con- 
structions. 



THE BEGINNINGS OF A COLLECTION 



75 



Justin 
Fear not them that kill 
you, and after that can do 
no more; but fear him who 
is able after death to cast 
both soul and body into 
hell. 



Render therefore unto 
Caesar the things that are 
Caesar's, and to God the 
things that are God's. 

Not every one that saith 
unto me, Lord, Lord, shall 
enter into the kingdom of 
heaven, but he that doeth 
the will of my Father, who 
is in heaven. For whoso- 
ever heareth me, and doeth 
my sayings, heareth him 
that sent me. And many 
will say unto me, Lord, 
Lord, have we not eaten 
and drunk in thy name and 
done wonders? And then 



New Testament 
And be not afraid of 
them that kill the body, but 
are not able to kill the 
soul; but rather fear him 
who is able to destroy both 
soul and body in hell 
(Matt. 10 : 28.) 

Be not afraid of them 
who kill the body, and after 
that have no more that they 
can do. But I will warn ye 
whom ye shall fear: Fear 
him who after he hath 
killed hath authority to 
cast into hell (Luke 12 : 4, 
5)- 

Render therefore unto 
Caesar the things that are 
Caesar's, and to God the 
things that are God's 
(Matt. 22 : 21). 

Not every one that saith 
unto me Lord, Lord, shall 
enter into the kingdom of 
heaven, but he that doeth 
the will of my Father who 
is in heaven (Matt. 7 : 21). 

He that heareth you 
heareth me . . . and he 
that rejecteth me rejecteth 
him that sent me (Luke 
10 : 16). 

Then shall ye begin to 
say, We did eat and drink 



7 6 



OUR NEW TESTAMENT 



Justin 
will I say unto them, De- 
part from me, ye workers 
of iniquity. Then shall 
there be wailing and gnash- 
ing of teeth when the right- 
eous shall shine as the sun, 
and the wicked are sent into 
everlasting fire. For many 
shall come in my name, 
clothed outwardly in sheep's 
clothing, but inwardly being 
ravening wolves. By their 
works ye shall know them. 
And every tree that bring- 
eth not forth good fruit is 
hewn down and cast into 
the fire. 



New Testament 
in thy presence, and thou 
didst teach in our streets 
(Luke 13 : 26). 

Many will say to me in 
that day, Lord, Lord, did 
we not ... by thy name 
do many mighty works? 
And then will I profess 
unto them, I never knew 
you, depart from me, ye 
workers of iniquity (Matt. 
7 : 22, 23). 

There shall be weeping 
and gnashing of teeth. 
Then shall the righteous 
shine forth as the sun in 
the kingdom of their father 
(Matt. 13 : 42, 43). 

Beware of false prophets, 
who come to you in sheep's 
clothing, but inwardly are 
ravening wolves (Matt 7 : 

15). 

Every tree that bringeth 
not forth good fruit is hewn 
down and cast into the fire. 
Therefore by their fruits 
ye shall know them (Matt. 
7 : 19, 20). 



A careful comparison of these and similar texts 
warrants two conclusions. The first is, that 
Justin was certainly familiar with our canonical 
Gospels of Matthew and Luke, and had a text 



THE BEGINNINGS OF A COLLECTION JJ 

substantially identical with that of the Vatican 
MS. The theory is not tenable that he possessed 
and quoted from some collection of our Lord's 
sayings differing from the canonical Gospels. 
There cannot have been, in his day, Gospels ac- 
cepted as authoritative, and having so nearly the 
same contents, other than Matthew and Luke. 
Such writings could not have existed and perished 
without leaving some trace. The second conclu- 
sion is, that he did not have any text of the Gos- 
pels before him as he wrote, but quoted from a 
well-stored memory. By this method he often 
combined parallel or similar passages from the 
two Gospels, and generally gave rather the sense 
of a passage than its exact form. On the other 
hand, brief and pregnant sayings have fastened 
themselves in his memory, and he cites them with 
exact verbal accuracy. Both the agreements and 
the disagreements between his citations and the 
original text, are better explained on this hypoth- 
esis than on any other. 

That Justin was acquainted with our synoptic 
Gospels is now very generally admitted, and this 
of course implies that at least a collection of those 
Gospels was now commonly received and publicly 
read in the churches. The questions still under 



yS OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

dispute are, Did he use Gospels other than the first 
three of our Canon? and, Did he know and use 
the fourth Gospel? The first of these questions 
is too technical, and of too little importance for 
our inquiry, to be here discussed. The relations 
of the non-canonical Gospels to the Canon are 
examined in a general way in another part of the 
investigation. The second question, however, 
is of great importance and is capable of discussion 
adequate for our purpose without technicalities. 

The evidence in favor of the conclusion that 
Justin knew and used the Gospel of John is both 
general and specific. General evidence is his ac- 
quaintance with ideas that can be reasonably sup- 
posed to have been derived from no other source. 
Throughout his writings he makes prominent the 
doctrine of the Logos, which he must have re- 
ceived either from John or from Philo. But there 
is a notable difference between these two forms 
of the Logos doctrine, the differentiating feature 
being the incarnation, which is fundamental in 
John's theology, but utterly foreign to Philo's 
philosophy. Now this is the very thing on which 
Justin seizes and exploits to the utmost. He 
could have derived this from no other source than 
the fourth Gospel — at least, no other source has 



THE BEGINNINGS OF A COLLECTION 79 

been even plausibly conjectured. The preexist- 
ence of Christ is not taught anywhere in the syn- 
optists, and nowhere but from the Gospel of 
John could Justin have obtained such an idea as 
this, " That Christ is the firstborn of God, being 
the Logos of which every race of men have been 
partakers, we have been taught and have declared 
before." * And since Justin distinctly sets this 
forth as an idea that he has been taught, the hy- 
pothesis that he independently originated it — im- 
probable in the extreme per se — is excluded. 

Other ideas that are distinctly Johannine are 
found in Justin. It will be sufficient to mention 
one more : 2 " For that he was the only begotten 
of the Father of the universe, having been be- 
gotten by him in a peculiar manner as his Logos 
and Power, and having afterward become a man 
through the Virgin, as we have learned from the 
' Memoirs/ I showed before." The virgin birth 
can only be learned from the " Memoirs " of Mat- 
thew and Luke, but the idea that Christ was the 
only-begotten Son could be derived from no 
other source than the fourth Gospel. That Jus- 
tin was well acquainted with that book must be 
said to be rendered extremely probable by his 

l Apol. i : 46. 2 Dial. 105. 



80 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

knowledge of these peculiarly Johannine ideas 
and phrases. 

That probability becomes moral certainty when 
we look at the specific evidence. As Mercutio 
said of his wound, " 'T is not so deep as a well nor 
so wide as a church door ; but 't is enough, 't will 
serve." It is the best-known passage in Justin's 
" Apology," his description of Christian baptism: 

I will also relate the manner in which we dedicated 
ourselves to God when we had been made new through 
Christ; lest, if we omit this, we seem to be unfair in the 
explanation we are making. As many as are persuaded 
and believe that what we teach and say is true, and 
undertake to be able to live accordingly, are instructed 
to pray and to entreat God with fasting, for the remis- 
sion of their sins that are past, we praying and fasting 
with them. Then they are brought by us where there 
is water, and are regenerated in the same manner in 
which we ourselves were regenerated. For, in the name 
of the Father and Lord of the universe, and of our 
Saviour, Jesus Christ, and of the Holy Spirit, they then 
receive the washing with water. For Christ also said, 
" Except ye be born again, ye shall not enter into the 
kingdom of heaven." Now, that it is impossible for 
those who have once been born to enter into their 
mothers' wombs, is manifest to all. . . And this wash- 
ing is called illumination, because they who learn these 
things are illuminated in their understandings (Apol. 
i : 60). 

How can any candid reader of this passage 
doubt that here we have a citation by Justin of 



THE BEGINNINGS OF A COLLECTION 51 

John 3 : 3-5? Yet it has been obstinately dis- 
puted that this is such a citation, on the sole 
ground that the quotation is not verbally accu- 
rate. Not one reader in ten of this page, one 
ventures to assert, can tell exactly in what the 
inaccuracy consists, without consulting his New 
Testament, so fairly is the meaning of Christ's 
words given. To insist on precise verbal ac- 
curacy in this case, in view of what we have 
discovered about Justin's habits in the matter of 
quotation, is inadmissible. And it should per- 
haps be added that this decision is greatly 
strengthened when we study the habits of the 
Fathers generally in regard to quotations from 
the New Testament, and even their citations of 
this particular passage. Dr. Ezra Abbot made a 
special examination of patristic literature to 
determine this very point, and shows conclusively 
that Hippolytus, Origen, Eusebius, Athanasius, 
Basil, Chrysostom, and Gregory of Nyssa do not 
quote this passage with any more verbal accu- 
racy than Justin. 1 Is it not absurd to apply to 
a Father of the second century a standard of per- 
fect accuracy which is not acknowledged or ob- 

1 The Fourth Gospel. Essays by Ezra Abbot, Andrew P. Pea- 
body, and Bishop Lightfoot. New York, 1891. See esp. pp. 26-37. 



82 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

served down to the fifth, if even then? And if 
free citation of this same text is no evidence that 
the later Fathers were ignorant of the fourth 
Gospel, how can the same citation prove that 
Justin did not know it? And most incredible of 
all, how can we suppose that the most striking 
saying in the fourth Gospel should have been 
hit upon independently by any other writer, or 
could be quoted by Justin from any other source ? 
Not to mention that no plausible suggestion of 
another source has ever been made. 

Harnack will not be suspected of any over 
haste to construe evidence in favor of the fourth 
Gospel, and this is his latest deliverance on this 
subject : " One must leave open the possibility, 
yes, a certain probability, that the designation 
of the fourth Gospel as the work of the apostle 
was to be found already, in a. d. 155-160, namely, 
on the part of Justin." 1 In such a case, where 
Harnack says " probable " we may say " certain." 

The most interesting thing, however, that we 
learn from Justin is the order of Christian wor- 
ship that obtained in his day. To convince the 
emperor that the Christian assemblies were harm- 
less he describes them in detail : 

1 Chronologie, i : 673. 



THE BEGINNINGS OF A COLLECTION 83 

And on the day called Sunday, all who live in cities 
or in the country gather together to one place, and the 
memoirs * of the apostles or the writings of the prophets 
are read, as long as time permits; then, when the 
reader has ceased, the president verbally instructs, and 
exhorts to the imitation of these good things. Then 
we all rise together and pray and, as we before said, 
when our prayer is ended, bread and wine and water 
are brought, and the president in like manner offers 
prayers and thanksgivings, according to his ability, and 
the people assent, saying Amen; and there is a dis- 
tribution to each, and a participation of that over which 
thanks have been given, and to those who are absent 
a portion is sent by the deacons. And they who are 
well to do, and willing, give what each thinks fit; and 
what is collected is deposited with the president, who 
succors the orphans and widows, and those who, through 
sickness or any other cause, are in want, and those who 
are in bonds, and the strangers sojourning among us, 
and in a word takes care of all who are in need. But 
Sunday is the day on which we all hold our common 
assembly, because it is the first day on which God, 
having wrought a change in the darkness and matter, 
made the world; and Jesus Christ our Saviour on the 
same day rose from the dead (i. 67). 

Apart from the general interest that attaches to 
this, the earliest account but one 2 of a Christian 

1 In the preceding chapter Justin says: "For the apostles, in the 
Memoirs composed by them, which are called Gospels, have de- 
livered unto us," etc. This is an additional reason why we can- 
not suppose that Justin had in his possession Gospels different from 
those that we now have. Already certain " Memoirs " were known 
as " Gospels " in a technical sense. We cannot doubt that they 
were the four now possessed by us. 

2 An earlier, but much less complete, account of a Christian assem- 
bly is given in Pliny's well-known letter to Trajan: "... They met 



84 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

assembly for worship, the thing that immediately 
concerns us is Justin's statement that the apostolic 
writings, or some of them, were by his time so 
firmly accepted as Scripture as to be regularly read 
and expounded in the public assemblies of Chris- 
tians, on equal terms with the Old Testament. 

We may note in passing that one of the most 
cogent reasons for regarding the Second Epistle 
of Peter a pseudonymous second-century compo- 
sition, and not the work of the apostle whose 
name it bears, is the reference to the writings of 
"our beloved brother Paul," and the ranking of 
them with " the other Scriptures " (2 Peter 3 : 
16). This is a saying that one can hardly re- 
gard as possible much prior to a. d. 150, because 
the idea does not seem to have taken definite form 
before that time. If, however, Second Peter was 
composed about the same time with Justin's 
Apology, its language exactly coincides with what 

on an appointed day before daylight, and sang antiphonally a hymn 
to Christ, as to some god, binding themselves by a solemn oath 
(sacramento), not for the purpose of any wicked design, but never 
to commit any fraud, theft, or adultery; never to falsify their word 
nor deny a trust when they should be called to deliver it up. After 
which it was their custom to separate and then to reassemble, to 
eat in common a harmless meal." We have here no mention of the 
reading of any scriptures, but this is doubtless due rather to Pliny's 
defective information than to the absence of this feature from 
Christian worship, even in the year 115, which is the approximate 
date of this letter. 



THE BEGINNINGS OF A COLLECTION 85 

we know to have been the growing opinion in the 
church, if, indeed, that opinion cannot be de- 
scribed as by that time universal. 

The so-called " catholic " Epistles are so evi- 
dently of an encyclical nature, either by express 
statement or by character of contents, that the 
case does not require argument. Their tradi- 
tional name indicates an early perception of the 
fact. As none of them is addressed to any defi- 
nite church, and some of them are not addressed 
to churches, they may well have made their way 
into general acceptance more slowly than the 
Pauline Epistles, and hence the early making of 
a collection of them in a separate group is doubt- 
ful. Two of this class of letters won their way 
to speedy and practically undisputed acceptance 
among the early churches, the First Epistle of 
Peter and the First of John. Which of these 
had the precedence, either of time or of honor, it 
is difficult to say. If we knew how widely the list 
of the Muratorian Fragment was accepted — what 
is covered by that elastic " we " — it might be 
possible to decide that John's first letter was more 
rapidly and widely accepted in the West than 
Peter's. The story of the catholic Epistles, as a 
separate collection, belongs to a later chapter. 



86 



OUR NEW TESTAMENT 



The way in which these collections came to 
be made and preserved by the churches has not 
been recorded, but may be conjectured with a 
high degree of probability. Every Jewish syna- 
gogue had, as its principal features, a bema or 
raised platform on which the reader of the Scrip- 
tures stood, and an ark or chest, in which the 
rolls of the law and prophets were kept. These 
rolls were wrapped in linen cloths, and placed in a 
case. Many interpreters suppose that the (petivyc, 
of which the apostle speaks in 2 Tim. 4 : 13, was 
not a traveling cloak, as our version has it, but 
a case for the " books " and " parchments " of 
which mention immediately follows, and so is it 
rendered in the Syriac version. It is in the 
highest degree probable — morally certain, indeed 
— that the Christian assemblies from the begin- 
ning adopted a similar method of caring for their 
sacred books ; and as soon as they began to have 
regular places of meeting, whether in private 
houses or elsewhere, the ark and its collection of 
rolls would be the most prized possession of a 
Christian community. 

That by the end of the third century the exist- 
ence of these collections was so notorious as to 
be known even to the heathen, is sufficiently 



THE BEGINNINGS OF A COLLECTION 87 

proved by the events of the last great persecution. 
In his edicts issued in 303 Diocletian struck three 
heavy and well-directed blows against Chris- 
tianity : the bishops were to be put to death, the 
churches were to be confiscated, and the sacred 
books were to be delivered to the authorities and 
destroyed. By thus depriving the Christians at 
one stroke of leaders, places of worship, and 
sacred books, the emperor believed that the de- 
struction of this feared and hated sect would be 
assured. It was a shrewd plan, and not the least 
promising feature of it was the attempted destruc- 
tion of the sacred books. But this was found the 
most difficult edict of the three to enforce. It 
was comparatively easy for the authorities to lay 
hands on a bishop; even if he tried to conceal 
himself or flee, which for the most part the 
bishops declined to do, he could be searched for 
and found with little difficulty. But the books 
were a different matter, and if the Christians were 
determined not to give them up, they could be 
easily concealed. Not a few Christians, some of 
them bishops, came forward and surrendered the 
sacred books in their charge, some saving their 
lives thereby, only to find themselves thereafter 
execrated as traitors (traditores) by the whole 



88 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

Christian community. Others pretended to 

comply, and gave up copies of books like the 

Shepherd and the Epistle of Barnabas, which, 

though formerly esteemed as Scripture by some, 

were by that time coming to be held to belong in 

a class below the apostolic writings. Though 

many copies were destroyed, the Christian 

churches as a whole seem to have preserved their 

cherished Scriptures, even through the terrible 

persecution of Diocletian. 

There is one other book that must have been 

definitely accepted as canonical by the time of 

~ _ Justin, and that is the Acts of 

&♦ H>. 177 

the Apostles. The evidence for 

such a conclusion is partly positive and partly 
negative. We have some definite fact, we have 
more probable inference. It is significant, as 
negative evidence, that this is a book about which 
no question seems ever to have been raised, which 
could not have been the case if there had been 
doubt as to its authenticity or authority. Then it 
was so obviously a continuation of the third Gos- 
pel, that acceptance of the Gospel necessarily car- 
ried with it the Acts also. It is true that the ear- 
liest direct quotation from the Acts is in the letter 
from the churches of Vienne and Lyons regarding 



THE BEGINNINGS OF A COLLECTION 89 

the great persecution in those cities, preserved in 
the history of Eusebius. 1 Alluding to some of 
their own martyrs, the letter says, " They prayed 
for those who ordered their torture, as did Ste- 
phen, that perfect martyr, ' Lord, lay not this sin 
to their charge'" (Acts 7 : 60). This letter 
was written about 177; and little later, if any, 
Irenseus, 2 in his work on heresies, quotes or 
summarizes whole chapters from the Acts. 

But much earlier than this — indeed, from the 
beginnings of Christian literature — we have al- 
lusions to the book and echoes of its language, 
such as to convince us that it was in use. Such 
are the following phrases in Clement : " more 
willing to give than to receive " ; " being es- 
pecially mindful of the words of the Lord Jesus, 
which he spake " ; "a man after mine own heart, 
David." This last is found in Acts 13 : 22, 
where it is not an exact quotation from the Old 
Testament, but a combination of 1 Sam. 13 : 14 
and Ps. 89 : 80. So unique a combination could 
hardly have been made by a second writer through 
fnere coincidence ; it must be a quotation. 

Ignatius in his letter to the Smyrneans writes, 
" And after his resurrection he did eat and drink 

X H. E., v. 2. 2 iii. 14, 15. 



90 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

with them, as being possessed of flesh, although 
spiritually he was united to the Father." There 
are but two written sources from which this 
knowledge could be derived, the last chapter of 
John's Gospel and Acts 10 : 41. The latter is 
the more probable source. Unwritten tradition 
may, in any case, be dismissed as too improbable 
for serious consideration. " Every one shall go 
to his own place " is a yet more unmistakable 
echo of Acts 1 : 25. 

Polycarp's epistle, brief as it is, has numerous 
suggestions of the Acts : " If we suffer because of 
the Name "; " May he give you part and lot "; 
" whom God raised up, having loosed the pangs 
of death "; " which is coming as judge of quick 
and dead." This last phrase caught the minds of 
many Fathers ; we find it in Barnabas and Justin. 
" He that made heaven and earth and all that in 
them is," is also echoed by a number of Fathers, 
especially in the Epistle to Diognetus. Alto- 
gether the evidence is quite sufficient to convince 
that this book must have belonged to the church 
collections from an early date, and was read in 
the churches generally. 

The specific purpose of Justin in his writings 
made it proper, almost necessary, for him to con- 



THE BEGINNINGS OF A COLLECTION 9 1 

fine his quotations to the Gospels — the teachings 
of Jesus, not those of Paul, were most likely to 
convince those for whom he wrote, a heathen 
emperor and Jews. Any argument from silence 
here would therefore be entirely worthless, nor is 
it necessary to quote the few passages in which 
critics think they see evidence that Justin was 
acquainted with the Pauline Epistles. We have 
already seen enough evidence from other sources 
to convince one who is open to conviction that 
these were generally known and publicly read, 
and Justin must be presumed to have been well 
acquainted with them, though he does not use 
them. 

This, then, is the result of our investigation 
thus far : About the middle of the second century 
our four Gospels were generally accepted and 
read in the Christian churches, together with the 
Acts, most of the Pauline Epistles, and in all 
probability also, the first Epistle of Peter and the 
first Epistle of John. But when we say that these 
churches did this or that in the second century, 
there is danger that some will understand con- 
certed action. Of this there is seldom any proof, 
and it is highly improbable per se. The churches 
instinctively acted on common principles, and thus 



92 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

without concert substantial uniformity was at- 
tained. The unfounded assumption of concert 
underlies much German writing, not only on the 
Canon, but on all early church history. 



IV 



THE VOICE OF HERESY 



iy 



HERESY began even during the apostolic 
age. The letters of Paul contain frequent 
references to false teachers and false doctrines, 
and in the First Epistle of John there are allu- 
sions by no means obscure to the Docetic heresy. 
With the progress of time and the growth of 
Christian churches, heresies became more frequent 
and won large numbers of adherents. In not a 
few cases they threatened for a time to become the 
prevailing belief of Christians, 1 in which case the 
heresy would have become orthodoxy. Almost 
every element of the gospel, nearly every teaching 
contained in the apostolic writings, became in turn 
the object of question or attack, and the survival 
of any part of the faith once delivered to the 
saints is no slight proof of its divine origin and 
inherent truth. 

With regard to the apostolic writings, two 
policies were pursued by the heretical sects and 

1 The only definition of orthodoxy that is historically verifiable is 
this: Orthodoxy is that body of opinion regarding Christian truth 
which at any given time is held by a majority of the church. Truth 
is not decided by majorities; orthodoxy is. 

95 



g6 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

their leaders. One was to accept their authority 
and endeavor to establish the heretical doctrine 
by quotations from these writings, which were 
often subjected to a forcible exegesis. The other 
plan was to reject some of the writings and so 
mutilate others as to make them confirm the 
heresy. The Fathers continually charge those 
whom they stigmatize as heretics with these faults. 
They sometimes seem to make their charge good, 
and in a few cases there can be little doubt that 
the charges are well founded. In this matter of 
quotations, however, we must bear in mind that 
unfair wresting of sentences from their context 
is always possible, and that in controversy scru- 
pulous care is necessary if one would be just to 
his opponent. It does not prepossess us in favor 
of the fairness of the Fathers, when we read the 
bitter and intemperate words nearly always 
written of a heretic. 

As an instance very pertinent to our inquiry, we 
are prepared to discount much of what Tertullian 
says, when we find him beginning his important 
treatise " Against Marcion " by describing Pon- 
tus and its people in the blackest terms, and then 
adding : " Nothing however in Pontus is so bar- 
barous and sad as the fact that Marcion was born 



THE VOICE OF HERESY 97 

there — fouler than any Scythian, more roving 
than the wagon life of the Sarmatian, more in- 
human than the Massagete, more audacious than 
an Amazon, darker than the sky [of Pontus], 
colder than its winter, more brittle than its ice, 
more deceitful than Ister, more craggy than the 
Caucasus. . . What Pontic mouse ever had such 
gnawing powers as he who has gnawed the 
Gospels to pieces? " The passage omitted is too 
indecent, as well as too abusive, for quotation. 
Let us be grateful that controversial manners 
have somewhat improved since the second cen- 
tury. What orthodox writer to-day would use 
such language regarding a Briggs or a Crapsey ? 

Bearing constantly in mind, therefore, that we 
know the early heretics only through writers who 
have attempted their refutation in such a spirit 
as Tertullian discloses, and using cautiously the 
few facts that we are able to glean from a mass 
of irrelevant detail, we shall still find it established 
beyond reasonable doubt that the heretics in gen- 
eral did not differ from the orthodox in the sec- 
ond century regarding the authenticity of the 
apostolic writings. Nor, for the most part, does 
the question of the authority of the writings seem 
to have been raised. If a heretic found any writ- 



9-J OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

ing too strongly opposed to his teaching to be 
reconciled with it, the simplest expedient was 
to ignore it, and commonly this was the course 
pursued. In the quotations given by the Fathers 
from the earlier heretical writings — those before 
150 — the same method of citing seems to prevail 
that we have found in the orthodox Fathers : fre- 
quent allusions, rather than exact quotations, and 
such a borrowing of words and phrases as indi- 
cates at least considerable acquaintance with the 
apostolic writings. 

Thus Simon Magus shows familiarity with 
Matthew, John, and First Corinthians, which he 
cites on an equal footing with the Old Testament, 
precisely as Clement or Polycarp might do. Cer- 
inthus, one of the earlier Gnostics, according 
to tradition personally opposed as an enemy to 
the truth by the Apostle John, used the Gospel of 
Matthew, but is said to have rejected the writings 
of Paul on account of that apostle's opposition 
to circumcision. So the exposition of the Ophite 
heresy, and others closely related to it, as given 
by Epiphanius, shows that the heretics were in- 
timately acquainted with the books quoted by 
the Fathers, and relied on them to establish their 
doctrines. Clear traces are found in the frag- 



THE VOICE OF HERESY 99 

ments of their writings of Matthew, Luke, John, 
the Pauline Epistles, Hebrews, and Revelation. 

Many extracts are also preserved from Basi- 
lides and Valentinus, which show that they at- 
tempted to sustain their teachings by quotations 
from the apostolic writings, often forcing the 
exegesis, it is true, but not much more than we 
find the orthodox Fathers doing. Tertullian tells 
us that Valentinus used " a complete Instru- 
ment," by which he apparently means the entire 
New Testament as then received, but he charges 
the heretic with mutilating the text, and Irenseus 
says that he added another Gospel to the canonical 
four. How much foundation there was for these 
charges we lack adequate means of judging. 

It is worthy of note also that with Heracleon, a 
follower of Valentinus, originated the allegorical 
method of interpretation — which presupposes ac- 
ceptance of the authority of the writings inter- 
preted. 1 For, if a writing lack authority, the 
simpler way is to reject it altogether. If its 
authority be admitted, but its literal meaning is 
awkward to reconcile with one's teaching, the al- 
legorical method can be used to make it mean 

1 Fragments of Heracleon's commentary on the Fourth Gospel may 
be found in the Cambridge " Texts and Studies," Vol. I., No. 4. 



100 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

whatever one likes. The Fathers were quick to 
recognize the advantages of this method, and 
found it so convenient for the defense of heresy 
that they adopted it in the cause of orthodoxy. 

It is agreed among the Fathers that the first 
formal attempt at a canon — that is to say, a defi- 
nite list of all the writings to be accepted as Scrip- 
ture — was made by Marcion, one of the most 
active heretics of the second century. That he 
was a native of Pontus is all that we learn of his 
origin from the Fathers nearest to him; later 
writers add that he was the son of the bishop of 
Sinope. He seems to have been at least a pres- 
byter, possibly a bishop, before leaving the East. 
He came to Rome somewhere about 150, and is 
charged with attempting to gain the foremost 
place there, failing which he became a heretic and 
was excommunicated. The facts regarding his 
life are obscure, and for our purpose unimpor- 
tant ; enough that he is known or believed to have 
traveled widely, establishing churches of his heret- 
ical order in many parts of the empire, which 
became formidable rivals of the Catholic Church 
and endured to the time of Constantine, or later. 

Four of the Fathers — Irenseus, Tertullian, Hip- 
polytus, and Epiphanius — have given us informa- 



THE VOICE OF HERESY IOI 

tion more or less detailed about this heresy. In 
the main particulars they are agreed, and Ter- 
tullian especially gives us enough quotations from 
Marcion's writings to substantiate a good part 
of what he tells us, provided the quotations are 
fair and accurate. It is plain that Marcion was a 
Gnostic, but of a different type from many of that 
period. Most of the Gnostics might be fairly 
described as heathen philosophers at bottom, who 
had attempted to incorporate more or less of the 
gospel into their systems. Marcion is rather to be 
looked upon as a Christian who has tried to in- 
corporate certain ideas of heathen philosophy into 
his faith. He was perplexed by the problem of 
evil, as every thinker about the world and man 
has been, and accepted as the best possible solution 
the dualism of Eastern paganism. Hippolytus 
maintains that Marcion got his ideas from Em- 
pedocles, and gives a rather elaborate exposition 
of the latter's philosophy to prove it ; but he only 
succeeds in making plain that Marcion did not 
get his fundamental ideas from the Greek philoso- 
pher. 1 

According to Tertullian, confirmed by the other 
Fathers, and by numerous quotations from Mar- 

1 Philosophiimena, vii. 17, 18. 



102 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

cion himself, this heretic asserted the existence 
of two Gods, or ruling principles (apyai), " one 
judicial, harsh, mighty in war; the other mild, 
placid, and simply good." * The former is the 
Creator, or Demiurge, the Jehovah of the Old 
Testament. From him proceeds the whole visible 
creation, including the body of man, and there- 
fore everything material is evil. Marcion at- 
tempted to prove this last part of his doctrine 
from such Scripture texts as, " The good tree 
brings not forth corrupt fruit, neither the corrupt 
tree good fruit," from which we see that the 
good God cannot be the author of this evil world. 
So when he found Jehovah declaring, " I am he 
that createth evil " (Isa. 45 : 7), he argued that 
this Creator could not be the good God. 

From this fundamental conception of the uni- 
verse, Marcion deduced the asceticism that, by 
general consent, was characteristic of him and his 
followers. Marriage among them was forbidden : 
it is the Creator who bids men increase and multi- 
ply, and so, to the believers in the good God, mar- 
riage can be nothing else than an evil and un- 
chaste thing. Tertullian labors hard to show the 
difference between this teaching and that of the 

1 Adv. Marc, i. 6. 



THE VOICE OF HERESY IO3 

Montanists, and the best he can make of it is to 
say that the latter " do not reject marriage, but 
simply refrain from it " 1 — which comes pretty 
near being a distinction without a difference. So 
far did the Marcionites push this hostility to mar- 
riage, that they would baptize only celibates and 
eunuchs — the married only after divorce, or in 
the article of death. 2 No flesh food must be eaten, 
and wine was forbidden even in the Eucharist. 
The blameless lives of the Marcionites are fre- 
quently mentioned by their adversaries, and the 
fact is even recorded that there were not a few 
martyrs among them. 

Man's fall, according to Marcion, shows that 
the Creator was neither good, prescient, nor 
powerful — had he been such, no such issue could 
have happened. 3 The good God has revealed him- 
self in Christ Jesus alone, and the salvation that 
Christ came to bring is the deliverance of men's 
souls only, it has nothing to do with their bodies, 
which perish and are not raised again. The 
Christ who came to save men was not the Messiah 
of the prophets, but a totally different being. Nor 
was he really a man, but only the semblance of 

1 Adv. Marc, i. 39. 2 Ibid., iv. 11. 

3 Ibid., i. 19, 24, 27; ii. 5. 



104 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

one, who was never really born and never really 
suffered on the cross. For, had he been a man, he 
would have been united to a material body, in 
which was the taint inherent in all material things. 
Like others who held the Docetic view of Christ's 
person, Marcion quoted Rom. 8 : 3, " God sent 
his Son in the likeness of sinful flesh " — in the 
likeness, not in the reality. 

Marcion therefore consistently rejected the en- 
tire Old Testament. The law and the gospel, as 
he conceived them, proceeded from two different 
Gods, and must be sharply separated. This de- 
cision Tertullian represents as " Marcion's prin- 
cipal work." Starting from such premises, Mar- 
cion professed to regard Paul as the only apostle 
who proclaimed the pure gospel, but we can see 
this important difference between Marcion and 
Paul : Marcion would abolish the law, because it 
is inherently evil, proceeding as it does from the 
inferior God ; Paul would abolish the law, be- 
cause, while it came from the good God (who was 
to Paul the only God), and had performed a good 
service (" the law was our tutor to bring us to 
Christ "), it had been fulfilled in Christ, who had 
nailed the law and its ordinances to his cross, and 
made the law obsolete for one who is justified by 



THE VOICE OF HERESY 105 

faith in Christ. Ignoring this difference, assu- 
ming that Paul and he occupied common ground, 
Marcion argued from the Pauline Epistles, es- 
pecially from Galatians, the essential difference 
between law and gospel, and maintained that the 
latter only is binding on Christians. 

It is this feature of his teaching, no doubt, that 
led Neander to say of Marcion, " Taking his 
stand, in the spirit of true Protestantism, on the 
ground of positive Christianity, he would admit 
that nothing but the words of Christ and of his 
genuine disciples ought to be considered as the 
fountainhead of the true gospel." 1 From the ac- 
count already given of this heresy and the philo- 
sophical grounds on which it rested, it will be 
evident how little of the real Protestant spirit 
there was in Marcion. Nor are other writers who 
speak of Marcion as a " reformer," and deprecate 
the treatment of him as a heretic, better justified 
in their remarks. 2 His ideas, as we have seen, 
were a travesty of the gospel. Can anybody 
doubt that if Marcion had been living in the time 
of Jesus, and had propounded to our Lord his 
ideas, they would have been pronounced incom- 

1 " History of the Christian Church," Vol. I., p. 459. 

2 Ferris, 127 seq. 



106 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

patible with the gospel that Christ proclaimed? 
Not with the violent language of Tertullian, we 
may be sure, but none the less decisively, Jesus 
would have declared his utter dissent from Mar- 
cion's teaching about God, and the corollaries 
drawn from that teaching. 

But Marcion did not stop with his repudiation 
of the Old Testament; he also refused to accept 
a large part of the New. This was the necessary 
result of his taking Paul as the sole true repre- 
sentative of the gospel of Christ. A large part of 
the writings accepted as Scripture by the Catholic 
Church of the second century could not possibly 
be reconciled with the teaching and practice of 
the Marcionites. This rejection of the other 
apostolic writings was justified by an appeal to 
the attitude that Paul Himself maintained to 
Peter and Barnabas, as the former himself de- 
scribes it in Galatians (chap. 2). The Jewish 
training of the other apostles had led them to mis- 
understand, misinterpret, and misrepresent the 
real gospel. The writings of such men were so 
far astray that they could not be accepted as 
authoritative. The gospel as Christ proclaimed 
it and as Paul interpreted it, had been vitiated by 
interpolations made in the interest of those who 



THE VOICE OF HERESY IO7 

still held to the law, and a critical reconstruction 
was necessary even in the case of those documents 
that were to be accepted. And so Marcion re- 
vised boldly, not only the list of writings then cur- 
rent, but even the writings themselves, and gave 
out first a list and then a text that he and his fol- 
lowers were willing to accept as authentic and 
authoritative. At least, this is what the Fathers 
charge him with doing. 

His list consisted, we are told, of two parts: 
the gospel, or Evangelicon, and the Pauline let- 
ters, or Apostolicon. His gospel seems to have 
been substantially the canonical Luke, with the 
omission of the first two chapters, and numerous 
smaller excisions and alterations, to make it suit 
his purpose better. Tertullian quotes so profusely 
from this alleged gospel of Marcion as to leave 
no serious doubt as to its character, and most 
modern scholars have no doubts. The Apostoli- 
con is said to have consisted of the ten Epistles 
that bear the name of Paul, excluding the Epistles 
to Timothy and Titus, but including Philemon. 1 

1 Westcott thinks that the charges of altering the text made against 
Marcion by Tertullian and Epiphanius are not borne out by the facts, 
at least in the case of the Epistles. The passages " which they cite 
from the Epistles are certainly insufficient to prove the point; and 
on the contrary they go far to show that Marcion preserved without 
alteration the text which he found in his manuscript. Of the seven 



108 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

Tertullian * reproaches Marcion with inconsist- 
ency in thus including Philemon in his canon, 
while rejecting three others that were also ad- 
dressed to individuals, which makes plain the 
grounds of Marcion's decision. His objection, 
that epistles addressed to individuals were not 
suited to edification of the church, was in fact 
shared by many who were perfectly orthodox, and 
such an objection did not at all imply doubt of the 
Pauline authorship of the writings. 

Marcion was a contemporary of Justin and 
Polycarp. His proposed canon is a clearer testi- 
mony to the existing acceptance of the Provisional 
Canon than we find explicitly given by any or- 
thodox Father of the period. The voice of heresy 
is louder than the voice of orthodoxy, but the 
two blend in perfect harmony. Tertullian per- 
ceived this implicit testimony of Marcion to the 
Canon of the Catholic Church, and was quick to 
take advantage of the controversial weapon thus 
made available. Chiding his antagonist for this 

readings noticed by Epiphanius, only two are unsupported by other 
authority; and it is altogether unlikely that Marcion changed other 
passages, when, as Epiphanius himself shows, he left untouched those 
which are most directly opposed to his system ' (p. 320). This shows 
how unsafe it is to accept without sifting the charges made by the 
Fathers against a heretic. 
1 Adv. Marc, v. 21. 



THE VOICE OF HERESY IO9 

mutilation of Luke's text, on the thin pretext of 
eliminating interpolations — like certain critics 
of our times, Marcion regarded anything that 
could not be made to square with his theories as 
an " interpolation " — Tertullian says, 1 " so that 
while he amends he confirms . . . that our gos- 
pel is the prior one." And in a later passage he 
presses this argument again : " The Gospel of 
Luke, which we are defending with all our might, 
has stood its ground from its very first publica- 
tion; whereas Marcion's Gospel is not known to 
most people, and to none whatever is it known 
without being at the same time condemned." 2 

The point was well taken. Nothing can be 
clearer than that Marcion's proposed canon logic- 
ally implies the existence of a larger body of 
writings accepted by the Catholic Church. No 
other reason than the existence of such a body of 
accepted Christian Scriptures can possibly be as- 
signed for his making a special canon of his own. 
A thing that is avowedly different, must have 
something from which to differ. We are not 
pressing our inferences too far, probably, when 
we see in Marcion's division of his canon into two 
parts, Evangelicon and Apostolicon, a recognition 

1 Adv. Marc, iv. 4. 2 Ibid., iv. 5. 



HO OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

of the existence of two orthodox collections of 
Gospels and Epistles, such as we saw reason to 
believe did exist long before the close of the 
second century. And when Tertullian speaks of 
" the apostolic Instrument " * he cannot mean 
anything else than an orthodox collection similar 
to Marcion's Evangelicon. 

It is perfectly true, as we have also seen, that 
in Marcion's day the Catholic Church had taken 
no steps to make a formal list of its accepted 
writings. There had been no need of such a list. 
Definitions are never found in the history of the 
Church until something makes a definition neces- 
sary. Marcion's attack on the canonicity of the 
writings of other apostles than Paul compelled the 
Church to defend those writings. The conflict 
with heretics led the Catholic Church first of all to 
that assertion of its exclusive right to the posses- 
sion and interpretation of the Christian Scrip- 
tures, which we have found so prominent and so 
emphatic in Irenseus, and ultimately to decide 
what should and what should not be accepted as 
Scripture. 

Some eminent critics, of whom Harnack is a 
shining example, have altogether missed the sig- 

1 De Mod., 12. 



THE VOICE OF HERESY III 

nificance of Marcion and his canon. That dis- 
tinguished German scholar will have it that the 
conflict with Marcion and the other heretics of 
the second century compelled the Catholic Church 
to make a Canon as a standard of orthodoxy. 
Now this is a flagrant case of putting the cart 
before the horse, so far at least as Marcion is 
concerned. He made his canon by the simple proc- 
ess of rejecting books that the Catholic Church 
already accepted. He affected the Catholic Canon 
only by provoking a more emphatic assertion of 
the authority of the books that he arbitrarily re- 
jected. That the Catholic Church already had its 
Evangelicon, and that this consisted of our four 
Gospels, can hardly be said to be any longer an 
open question. That it had its Apostolicon, con- 
sisting of at least the thirteen Epistles of Paul, 
can no more be successfully questioned. That 
there never was any serious doubt of the canon- 
icity of First John and First Peter is equally cer- 
tain. We meet the first positive proofs of the 
acceptance of all these as a collection in Irenseus, 
perhaps, but that is because of the paucity of the 
literature for the generation preceding him. A 
time equal at least to a generation must be as- 
sumed for the growth of that precision and cer- 



112 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

titude which mark the statements of Irenseus, 
especially his treatment of the four Gospels. 

Yet more influential than the Marcionites in 
the development of the Canon was the movement 
known as Montanism. Though the historical oc- 
casion of this sect was the teaching of the Phry- 
gian " prophet " whose name it bears, its real 
cause was the need of a protest against the grow- 
ing corruptions and worldliness of the Church. 
It was, in short, the first attempt at a Protestant 
Reformation — but with this difference : Protes- 
tantism of the sixteenth century took its stand on 
the exclusive authority of the Scriptures ; Protes- 
tantism of the second century chose the less tenable 
ground of personal inspiration as the basis of au- 
thority. The Montanists were in the right when 
they insisted on the importance of the higher 
spiritual life — a life begotten by the Spirit of God, 
sanctified by the same Spirit, and directed by the 
Spirit as an indwelling, enlightening and guiding 
power. They anticipated George Fox in main- 
taining the " inner light," and outdid Fox in their 
doctrine of prophecy. 

Of Montanus himself we know very little, but 
it was generally believed that he had been a 
heathen priest prior to his conversion, probably 



THE VOICE OF HERESY II3 

of the goddess Cybele. Phrygia was the center, 
in the second century, of the most fanatical and 
frenzied of the heathen cults, in which was found 
a large element of soothsaying and prophecy 
under the supposed inspiration of the gods. 
Montanus seems to have brought these heathen 
ideas and practices over into his new faith, merely 
giving them a Christian dress. The Christian 
doctrine of the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, was the 
point of contact, and Montanus had little difficulty 
in adapting it to his purpose. It is asserted that 
he proclaimed himself to be the Paraclete, and 
one Father goes so far as to represent him as say- 
ing, " I am the Father and the Son and the Para- 
clete." * But this is a late authority, and is either 
an honest blunder or a slander. 

Sober scholars of our day rather incline to the 
view that all such statements are misunderstand- 
ings, if not perversions, of the teaching of Mon- 
tanus. Certainly he claimed to be inspired, and 
one of the sayings attributed to him with most 
probability is, " Behold, man is like a lyre, and I 
play on him like a plectrum." He is probably 
speaking, not in his own person, but of the Para- 
clete, and he says no more than the familiar il- 

1 Didymus de Trinitate, Migne's Latin Patrology, 39 : 984. 
H 



114 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

lustration of inspiration in the patristic literature. 
But whatever the teaching of Montanus, the idea 
accepted among his followers was that our Lord's 
promise of the Paraclete was to all believers, not 
to the apostles only, and that special divine in- 
spiration and divine revelations did not cease 
with the apostolic age. Two of his disciples sur- 
passed Montanus himself as prophets, in the 
estimation of his followers — Priscilla (or Prisca) 
and Maximilla, married women who left their 
husbands and devoted themselves to this wrork of 
prophesying. The few fragments of their say- 
ings that have been preserved — they do not ap- 
pear to have left any writings * — are by no means 
remarkable, and fail to account for the respect 
with which Tertullian quotes them. 2 

We cannot tell just how far Tertullian repre- 
sents the Montanistic party in this respect, but he 

1 It is only fair to add that Hippolytus says the Montanists " have 
an infinity of books of these prophets whose words they neither ex- 
amine by reason, nor give heed to those who can, but are carried 
away by their undiscriminating faith in them, thinking that they learn 
through their means something more than the law, the prophets, and 
the gospels." But the vehemence of Hippolytus throws much sus- 
picion on his accuracy. That the followers of the prophets wrote 
down some sayings is all that we are warranted in inferring from 
any facts now known. 

2 In a number of passages Tertullian quotes Montanistic prophets, 
generally if not always women, usually without naming them. De 
Resitr, Cam., n; De Exhort. Cast., io; De Fuga., 9, 11; Adv. 
Prax. 8, 30. 



THE VOICE OF HERESY II5 

at least contends that the revelations of these 
prophets were not intended to supersede Scrip- 
ture, but to supplement it. And more than a little 
plausibility must be conceded to his arguing of 
this point : 

If Christ is always, and prior to all, equally truth is 
a thing sempiternal and ancient. . . It is not so much 
novelty as truth which convicts heresies. Whatever 
savors of opposition to truth, this will be heresy, even 
[if it be an] ancient custom. . . The rule of faith, in- 
deed, is altogether one, alone irremovable and irreform- 
able; the rule, to wit, of believing in one only God 
omnipotent, the Creator of the universe, and his Son, 
Jesus Christ, born of the Virgin Mary, crucified under 
Pontius Pilate, raised again the third day from the dead, 
received in the heavens, sitting now at the right [hand] 
of the Father, destined to come to judge quick and dead 
through the resurrection of the flesh as well as of the 
spirit. This law of faith being constant, the other suc- 
ceeding points of discipline and conversation admit the 
" novelty " of correction, the grace of God, to wit, 
operating and advancing even to the end. For what 
kind of [supposition] is it, that while the devil is always 
operating and adding daily to the ingenuities of in- 
iquity, the work of God should either have ceased, or 
else desisted from advancing? Whereas the reason why 
the Lord sent the Paraclete was, that, since human me- 
diocrity was unable to take in all things at once, disci- 
pline should, little by little, be directed and ordained 
and carried on to perfection, by that Vicar of the Lord, 
the Holy Spirit. . . Nothing is without stages of 
growth; all things await their season. . . So too right- 
eousness — for the God of righteousness and of crea- 
tion is the same — was first in a rudimentary state, 



Il6 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

having a natural fear of God: from that stage it ad- 
vanced through the Law and the Prophets to infancy; 
from that stage it passed through the Gospel to the 
fervor of youth; now through the Paraclete it is set- 
tling into maturity. 1 

In another of his works, Tertullian makes the 
chief end of the new prophecy the interpretation 
of the Scriptures already given : 2 

Now, since it was " needful that there should be here- 
sies, in order that they which are approved might be 
made manifest," since however these heresies would be 
unable to put on a bold front without some counte- 
nance from the Scriptures, it therefore is plain enough 
that the ancient Holy Writ has furnished them with 
sundry materials for their evil doctrine, which very 
materials indeed [so distorted] are refutable from the 
same Scriptures. It was fit and proper, therefore, that 
the Holy Ghost should no longer withhold the effusions 
of his gracious light upon these inspired writings, in 
order that they might be able to disseminate the seeds 
[of truth] with no admixture of heretical subtleties, and 
pluck out of it their tares. He has accordingly now dis- 
persed all the perplexities of the past, and their self- 
chosen parables and allegories, by the open and per- 
spicuous explanation of the entire mystery, through 
the new prophecy, which descends in copious streams 
from the Paraclete. If you will only draw water from 
his fountains, you will never thirst for other doctrine. 

1 This is a passage of exceeding interest, on account of this ex- 
plicit statement by Tertullian of the regula fidei, or Rule of Faith, 
to which he makes so many references in his writings. It is the 
oldest recorded form of the Apostles' Creed (De Virg. V eland, i). 
A larger form is given elsewhere by Tertullian (De Praescr. Haer. 
13). 

£ De Resur. Cam., 63. 



THE VOICE OF HERESY 117 

These claims of the Montanistic prophets, and 
their acceptance and advocacy by a man so highly 
endowed by nature and so thoroughly trained in 
controversy as Tertullian, compelled the Catholic 
Church to weigh well both the claims themselves 
and the grounds on which they rested. There 
was no valid a priori reason for denying the pos- 
sibility of continuous inspiration and revelation 
in the Church ; nor could it be successfully main- 
tained that this was any novelty in Christian 
doctrine. The earliest Christian documents, such 
as the Didache, show plainly that the prophetic 
gift was not supposed to cease with the apostles 
— or even the apostolate itself — for both 
" prophets " and " apostles " are distinctly rec- 
ognized as still existing at the time of the com- 
pilation of that book. Whether these Montanistic 
" prophets " had a genuine gift of prophecy was 
a question of fact, rather than of doctrine. The 
practical test recommended by our Lord himself 
was therefore applied, and the tree was judged 
by its fruits. The extravagant claims made by 
the Montanists for the inspiration of their 
prophets did not commend themselves to Chris- 
tian believers at large as well founded. The 
majority of Christians discovered in these 



Il8 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

prophesyings little resemblance to the prophetic 
gift of the apostolic age, or to those endowments 
supposed to remain in the church in the sub- 
apostolic age. They saw rather in these fren- 
zied utterances a likeness to the ecstatic orgasms 
that Christians had always ascribed to demonic 
or diabolic agency, instead of the Holy Spirit's 
influence. 

It was most unfortunate for Montanism that its 
purpose of reformation should have become com- 
plicated with this assertion of the inspiration of 
" prophets " and the divine authority of their 
" revelations." On the main issue the Montanists 
were right, but our sympathies must go with the 
Catholic Church in the matter of these prophetic 
claims, and we cannot but rejoice that this idea of 
continuous prophecy was not established as the 
orthodox doctrine among Christians. It would 
have led infallibly to great confusion, if not to 
hopeless disorder. Much has been said, and said 
with great truth, of the errors that have been com- 
mitted in the interpretation of the Scriptures by 
the learned scholars of the church. The present 
age is perfectly convinced that the greatest theolo- 
gians of the past have failed to include all truth 
in their systems. Protestants at least see clearly 



THE VOICE OF HERESY II9 

that there are great defects, misunderstandings, 
errors even, in the decrees of councils regarding 
the things that must be believed by all Christians. 
But does anybody suppose that the progress of 
Christian doctrine would have been more steady 
or stable, or that results more assured would have 
been reached, if, instead of being formulated by 
the sober doctors and churchmen of the ages, it 
had grown under the continuous " revelations " 
of neurotic women, like those in whom Tertul- 
lian believed so unquestionably? Or where 
should we be to-day if every generation had pro- 
duced a Mrs. Eddy? 

And yet the Catholics were by no means con- 
sistent in their opposition to the Montanistic idea. 
As it so often happened in the development of 
the Church, what was good in Montanism was 
decisively rejected, while the very evil that for a 
time had been successfully withstood was even- 
tually assimilated. In the end the Catholic Church 
accepted as orthodox the idea of continual in- 
spiration and revelation, differing from the Mon- 
tanists only in the question as to where the in- 
spiration is lodged. The Montanist said, In the 
individual believer ; the Catholics maintained that 
the continuous inspiration was promised to the 



120 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

whole Church, and therefore only when the whole 
Church speaks are men certain that the Holy 
Spirit has led the followers of Christ into the 
truth. After the Council of Nice, this doctrine 
was further specialized, and thenceforth it was 
maintained as orthodox doctrine that the voice of 
the Spirit is certainly heard only through an 
ecumenical council. 

But in the second and third centuries the 
Catholic Church could not or would not, and at 
any rate did not, accept the Montanistic claim to 
superior spiritual insight. The Catholic view was 
that the faith had once for all been delivered to 
the saints. This gave an aspect of finality to the 
apostolic doctrine, and to the Canon in which that 
doctrine was embodied. Accordingly, in this con- 
test with the Montanists, the idea of a closed 
Canon seems first to have risen to consciousness 
among Catholics. The statement of the doctrine 
seems clearly to be the result of the position in 
which the Catholic Church found itself. The 
most effective weapon against the Montanists and 
their claims was to put forth the counter-claim 
that inspiration of individuals ceased with the 
apostles, and that in the apostolic writings the 
Church had a definite body of truth committed to 



THE VOICE OF HERESY 121 

it for preservation and defense, to which no 
additions could be made. 1 

Yet it should not be supposed that the Catholic 
Church newly invented this idea, simply because 
it was found to be a convenient controversial 
weapon. The truth is rather that the idea was 
already latent in the subconsciousness of Chris- 
tians, and that the controversy merely had the 
effect of bringing about an earlier formal state- 
ment than would otherwise have occurred. Once 
stated, the exigencies of controversy led the 
Catholic party to lay great stress on it, and so 
make it a permanent part of the doctrine of the 
Church. But there can be little doubt, if any, that 
the earlier Fathers, from Ignatius down, would 
have been as ready as Irenaeus to state the doc- 
trine, had there been occasion to do so, and that 
they would have been as much shocked as the 
opponents of the Montanists by the claim that 
any post-apostolic writing should be put on the 
same plane of authority with the writings of the 

1 The last clause was the new and significant thing. As con- 
cerned the written documents, there was no real issue between 
Montanist and Catholic. But now the idea became fixed in 
Catholic circles that the apostles alone possessed full inspiration, 
and hence their writings alone were to be accepted as authoritative. 
Clem. Alex. Strom, iv. 21. 135 cf. Tertullian De Exhort. 4; De 
V eland, Virg., 4; De Resurrec, 24; De Jejun., 15; De Pud., 12; 
De Monog. 4. 



122 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

apostles. From this time forward, then, apos- 
tolicity became the touchstone of canonicity — 
that is to say, not the only test, but by all means 
the most important test, to which all writings 
were subjected. The further development of this 
idea belongs, however, to a later chapter. 

Another peculiarity of the Montanists had an 
important effect on the development of the Canon, 
namely, their chiliastic ideas, not indeed intro- 
duced by them, but by the third century so identi- 
fied with them as to become a distinct feature of 
their teaching. Chiliasm had been latent in the 
early church, and often appears in the writings 
of the second century, but the church had rather 
tolerated than approved it, and it had never be- 
fore been propagated by a party. The Epistle 
of Barnabas (chap. 15) reasons that since " a day 
with the Lord is as a thousand years," God will 
finish everything and bring the world to an end 
in six days, or six thousand years from the crea- 
tion, when he will rest a day, another thousand 
years, the millennial Sabbath. This will be fol- 
lowed by an eighth day, the eternal Sabbath, as a 
type of which Christians observe the Lord's Day. 
Irenseus 1 repeats the same idea, at greater length. 

1 Contr. Haer. } v. 32-35. 



THE VOICE OF HERESY 1 23 

Eusebius quotes Papias as saying " that there will 
be a period of some thousand years after the 
resurrection of the dead, and that the king- 
dom of Christ will be set up in material form 
on this very earth." But Eusebius * criticizes 
Papias as " not perceiving that the things said 
by them, the apostles, were spoken mystically in 
figures." 

But of all the early Christian writers, perhaps 
Justin 2 was the most explicit in his statement of 
the chiliastic notion. In avowing his opinion he 
says expressly that " many who belong to the- 
pure and pious faith, and are true Christians, 
think otherwise." He goes on to say: 

But I and others, who are right-minded Christians 
on all points, are assured that there will be a resurrec- 
tion of the dead, and a thousand years in Jerusalem, 
which will then be built, adorned, and enlarged, as the 
prophets Ezekiel and Isaiah and others declare. [But 
Justin does not say this will occur at once, which was 
the Montanistic idea.] . . . And further, there was a 
certain man with us, whose name was John, one of the 
apostles of Christ, who prophesied by a revelation that 
was made to him, that those who believed in our 
Christ would dwell a thousand years in Jerusalem; and 
that thereafter the general, and in short, the eternal 
resurrection and judgment of all men would likewise 
take place. 

l H. E., iii. 39. - Dial. c. Try., 80. 



124 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

The Montanists, therefore, differed from their 
predecessors mainly in the clearness and precision 
of their views regarding the speedy coming of the 
Lord. If we may trust Epiphanius * and other 
Fathers, one of their prophets (Priscilla?) testi- 
fied that the Lord had appeared to her and re- 
vealed the very place where the parousia would 
occur, and the exact site of the New Jerusalem. 
This was the little town of Pepuza, in Phrygia. 
Such pretended " revelations " were, rightly or 
wrongly, held responsible by the Catholic party 
for much of the fanaticism and disorder that they 
charged upon the Montanists, and with the rejec- 
tion of these the Church began to look with dis- 
favor on all chiliastic notions. 

On the other hand, the Montanists appealed 
confidently to Scripture in confirmation of their 
views, as chiliasts have continued to do until this 
day. The most sober statement of the doctrine is 
that of Tertullian : 2 

But we do confess that a kingdom is promised to us 
upon the earth, although before heaven, only in another 
state of existence; inasmuch as it will be after the resur- 
rection for a thousand years in the divinely built city 
of Jerusalem, " let down from heaven," which the 
apostle also calls " our mother from above "; and while 

1 Haer., 49. 1. 2 Adv. Marc, iii. 25. 



THE VOICE OF HERESY I25 

declaring that our 7roAiTev>a, or citizenship, is in heaven, 
he predicates of it that it is really a city in heaven. 
This both Ezekiel had knowledge of and the Apostle 
John beheld. And the word of the new prophecy which 
is part of our belief, attests how it foretold how there 
would be for a sign a picture of this very city exhibited 
to view previous to its manifestation. This prophecy, 
indeed, has been very lately fulfilled in an expedition 
to the East. For it is evident from the testimony of 
even heathen witnesses, that in Judea there was sus- 
pended in the sky a city early every morning for forty 
days. As the day advanced the entire figure of its walls 
would wane gradually, and sometimes it would vanish 
instantly. 

It is evident from this and numerous other pas- 
sages that the Montanists accepted and used the 
same Scriptures that were honored in the Catholic 
Church. In a single treatise, " Concerning Flight 
in Persecution," Tertullian * quotes from nearly 
the whole Provisional Canon; and in the table 
of quotations appended to his writings in the 
" Ante-Nicene Fathers " may be found citations 
from almost every chapter of that Canon. Also 
he quotes from Hebrews, James, and Peter, books 
that had not yet been so generally accepted. 

1 It would lead us too far afield to discuss here the interesting 
question of the source of Tertullian's quotations. Though a good 
Greek scholar, and familiar with the Septuagint, presumably there- 
fore able to quote from the original New Testament writings had 
he chosen, he apparently uses an old Latin version, made during 
the second century, one of those that Jerome afterward revised 
in his preparation of the Vulgate (see Reuss., p. m), 



126 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

But of all the New Testament books, none was 
so frequently or confidently cited by the Mon- 
tanists as the Apocalypse, especially the passage 
20 : 1-6. They set the fashion of a wrong exe- 
gesis of this famous passage that has prevailed to 
our own day. Carefully examined and fairly in- 
terpreted, it will be seen that this vision of John 
concerns only the saints who have suffered as 
witnesses of Christ in the great persecution of 
the beast, not a resurrection of all the righteous 
dead at the end of the world, as the Montanists 
asserted and as so many exegetes have continued 
to maintain. As for the " thousand years," the 
symbolical use of numbers throughout the Apoca- 
lypse forbids us to interpret this literally. But 
instead of proposing a better exegesis of the 
Apocalypse, in the place of the faulty Montanistic 
interpretation, the Catholic party found it much 
easier to raise doubts concerning the canonicity of 
the book, and even its apostolic origin. On this 
account the Apocalypse was everywhere less es- 
teemed for a time than would otherwise have 
been the case, and we find a tendency in the East, 
especially, not only during the height of the Mon- 
tanistic controversy, but for a long time after- 
ward, to drop this book from the Canon. 



THE VOICE OF HERESY 1 27 

Eusebius 1 quotes Dionysius the Great (about 
250) against the book, which the latter says many 
ascribe to Cerinthus, who was carnal in nature 
and so imagined the kingdom of Christ to be an 
earthly one. Dionysius remarks : " That this is 
the work of one John I do not deny, and I agree 
that it is also the work of a holy and inspired 
man. But I cannot readily admit that he was 
the apostle, the son of Zebedee, the brother of 
James, by whom the Gospel of John and the 
Catholic Epistle 2 were written. . . But I think 
he was some other one of those in Asia, as they 
say that there are two monuments in Ephesus, 
each bearing the name of John." The bishop 
goes on to discuss the style of the Gospel and 
Epistle as compared with that of the Apocalypse, 
quite in the manner of a modern critic, but he 
does not fail to make it clear that these critical 
doubts were first suggested by the content of 
John's revelations and the encouragement that 
they gave to chiliasm. 

Cyril of Jerusalem, a little later omits the 
Apocalypse from the list of canonical books given 

*H. E., vii. 25. 

2 The use of the singular number here is significant. It shows 
that in the middle of the third century only the First Epistle of 
John was canonical in the East. 



128 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

in his lectures to catechumens, 1 and even forbids 
the reading of it : " But let the rest be put aside 
in a secondary rank. And whatever books are 
not read in churches, these read not even by 
thyself, as thou has heard me say." But, of 
course, what was forbidden to catechumens should 
not be regarded as forbidden to more mature 
Christians, though the effect of such injunctions 
would certainly be to discourage the reading of 
the Apocalypse by any. 

In this attitude of suspicion and discourage- 
ment toward this book, Cyril and Dionysius fairly 
represent the whole Eastern Church of the third 
century. The Apocalypse is omitted from the 
Peshito version, of which more will be said in 
a later chapter. Theodore, Chrysostom, and 
Theodoret, foremost among the Greek Fathers of 
this period, while they do not definitely reject the 
book, refrain from quoting it as Scripture in any of 
their extant writings. Its place as the last book in 
all the early MSS and versions that contain it — a 
place that it still holds in our New Testament — 
mutely witnesses to the fact of its late reception 
into the Canon. It is the one instance of a book 
that was first accepted, then doubted, and finally 

1 iv. 36. 



THE VOICE OF HERESY 120, 

received as authoritative by the whole church. 
But not until the time of Athanasius does the East 
appear to have made up its mind definitely in 
favor of its acceptance. 1 

In the West, where Montanism existed for a 
time, but was never formidable, the Apocalypse 
continued to be highly esteemed. We learn from 
Eusebius that Gaius, a Roman presbyter early in 
the third century, a contemporary of Tertullian, 
agreed with certain heretics in ascribing the 
Apocalypse to Cerinthus, but the West was prac- 
tically unanimous in its allegiance to the book. It 
seems fairly evident too, that to this stanch alle- 
giance of the West we owe the final acceptance of 
the book and its place in the Canon. 

Our estimate of the influence of heresy on the 
Canon would not be complete without at least a 

1 It is a remarkable fact that while the Apocalypse was one of the 
earliest books to be received, it was the last to be persistently 
doubted. It is quoted in the letter of the churches of Lyons and 
Vienne, which cited Rev. 22: 11 with the words, "that the Scrip- 
ture might be fulfilled " (Eusebius, H. E., v. 59). Melito of 
Sardis wrote a commentary on this book about a. d. 170 (Eusebius, 
H. E., iv. 29), the first book of the New Testament to be so 
honored. Hippolytus quotes at length chap. 17, 18, and ascribes 
the book to " blessed John, apostle and disciple of the Lord " (ANF 
5 : 211). It is found in the old Latin version, as far back as we can 
trace it. On the other hand, Anastasius, patriarch of Antioch, gives 
a canonical list as late as 599, in which the Apocalypse is not 
mentioned, even among twenty-five apocryphal books outside of the 
Canon. 



130 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

glance at several other heresies of the second cen- 
tury, less influential than the two that we have been 
considering, but nevertheless not to be overlooked. 
The first of these were the Alogi, about whom 
Hug has sarcastically remarked that hitherto the 
less scholars have known about them the more 
they have written. Nearly all that anybody really 
knows of this sect is that Epiphanius invented the 
name to describe certain heretics, about 170, 
who agreed neither with Cerinthus nor the Mon- 
tanists, but rejected the Gospel and Epistle of 
John on account of the doctrine of the Logos 
contained in them. According to Epiphanius * 
they also objected to the Apocalypse, on the 
ground that it was valueless ; he represents them 
as saying, " What value has the Apocalypse of 
John for me, speaking as it does of seven angels 
and seven trumpets. ,, It is highly probable that 
Irenaeus refers to the same party, and the Gaius 
mentioned above is thought to have belonged to 
them. The heretics whom Irenseus describes, 
without naming them, rejected both the Gospel of 
John and the Spirit of prophecy. The Alogi not 
only rejected the Johannine writings but, like 
Gaius, ascribed their authorship to Cerinthus. 

1 C. Haer., iii. u. 9. 



THE VOICE OF HERESY I3I 

Inasmuch as Cerinthus was a Docetist, utterly- 
opposed to John's doctrine, and so much disap- 
proved by the apostle that tradition represents 
him as rushing out of a bath into which the heretic 
had entered, rather than remain under the same 
roof with such a false teacher, no less probable 
author of these writings could well have been as- 
signed. 1 It is much as if a writer of our day were 
to assert that the Declaration of Independence 
was not really composed by Thomas Jefferson but 
by Benedict Arnold. 

It will be seen, therefore, that the fact of their 
rejection of John's writings is the only definite 
thing known about the Alogi, and whether they 
were few or many we can only conjecture. That 
there was such a party or sect in the last quarter 
of the second century is additional testimony to 
the general acceptance of the fourth Gospel and 
other Johannine writings at that time, and for at 
least a generation previous, while this heretical 
attack on the authority of these writings led the 
Church to a more emphatic assertion of their 
authenticity, inspiration, and authority. 

The Encratites, of whom we learn from Ire- 
naeus and other Fathers, were a sect who pushed 

1 Westcott, 254. 



132 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

asceticism to what was considered a heretical ex- 
treme. According to Eusebius, 1 they received the 
Gospels, but rejected the Pauline Epistles and the 
Acts, thus very nearly reversing the position of 
the Marcionites. Some of them at least received 
the Old Testament. Eusebius, following Ire- 
naeus, credits the origin of the sect to Tatian, and 
it seems at least certain that Tatian joined them. 
What they probably could not accept in the Paul- 
ine Epistles was the doctrine of Christian liberty 
there set forth, which was of course irreconcilable 
with their teaching of extreme and compulsory 
asceticism. 

We have now heard all that the voice of heresy 
has to tell us regarding the progress of the Canon. 
It would be easy to exaggerate its importance — 
some have exaggerated it. Heresy was chiefly a 
stimulus that hastened a growth already begun — 
in a single instance, a handicap that retarded 
progress. The necessity of defending what had 
come to be accepted as the Catholic faith, the 
orthodox belief, and of finding for it a basis of 
generally recognized authority, apart from mere 
tradition, developed in the Church a conscious- 
ness of the value of the Scriptures more speedily 

1 H. E., iv. 29, 5. 



THE VOICE OF HERESY 1 33 

than would otherwise have been produced. 
Heresy did not cause any new development, or give 
rise to any new doctrine. It was like the foreign 
body introduced into a saturated solution, which 
instantly becomes the center of crystalization. 
The ideas about the Canon were already in the 
Church, suspended in solution, so to speak; all 
that was needed was an adequate occasion to in- 
duce the Church to define these ideas with pre- 
cision. Heresy furnished that occasion, and in 
that manner and to that extent, and thus alone, it 
became an important historical factor in the for- 
mation of the Canon. 



V 
THE "PROVISIONAL" CANON 



DURING the last three decades of the second 
century, it is plain that there had come 
to be a general understanding in the Catholic 
churches that twenty books of our present Canon 
were to be accepted as Scripture and publicly 
read in Christian worship: the four Gospels, the 
Acts, thirteen Epistles of Paul, First Peter, and 
First John. Irenseus, as we have seen, quotes all 
of these, and in such a way as clearly to imply 
that for some time they had held unquestioned 
the place of authority that he ascribes to them — 
probably for a generation at least. Though cer- 
tain heretics had questioned some of these twenty 
books, there had never been any doubts in the 
Catholic Church about their authenticity or au- 
thority. We have earlier and stronger evidence 
of the acceptance of some than we have of others, 
but not a particle of evidence against the canon- 
icity of any. Just as rapidly as they became 
known throughout the church they seem to have 
been accepted. 

There were other books at this time recognized 

i37 



I38 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

as of actual or virtual apostolic authorship. Many 
believed these to be inspired, some churches read 
them, and eventually some of them became canoni- 
cal; but down to the year 200 they were not so 
generally received as Scripture as to be entitled 
to canonical rank. There were also in circulation 
books, not a few, that were generally believed 
not to be Scripture, though some of them bore 
the names of apostles. Irenseus 1 speaks of the 
" unspeakable number of apocryphal and spurious 
writings of the Marcosians," and these terms 
(dnoxpixpa, vbda) were thenceforth used to de- 
scribe uncanonical writings. 

There is little need to multiply proofs of the 
above statements. In the first place, sufficient evi- 
dence has been furnished in previous chapters, 
cited there for a different purpose, which it would 
be superfluous to repeat. In the second place, 
proofs are needless because the facts are generally 
admitted. Scholars of all schools admit that with 
Irenaeus we have a Canon, in the sense of a defi- 
nite number of books everywhere received. Har- 
nack is inclined, however, to lay stress on a 
certain feature of the age of Irenaeus. It is the 
age that witnesses the definite establishment of 

1 Adv. Haer., i. 20. 1. 



CANON 139 

the Catholic Church. The churches scattered 
throughout the Roman empire have awakened to 
self -consciousness and a sense of solidarity per- 
vades them. To justify this unity of faith and 
practice a definite body of apostolic literature has 
become a necessity ; hence a Canon " suddenly " * 
appears with Irenseus. 

This is doubtless a rational account of the 
facts in all but the assertion of suddenness. The 
appearance of the Canon is sudden only to a 
reader of the Fathers, and to him only in the 
sense that there is a gap of about a generation 
between Justin and Irenseus, which is practically 
unfilled by any surviving literature. In this in- 
terval we are entitled to assume the continuance 
of the process that we have seen clearly beginning 
in the first half of the second century. When 
we arrive at Irenaeus we see the point of develop- 
ment reached without having seen the process. 
The impression of suddenness is thus wholly due 
to our ignorance of what happened, and has no 
objective reality. 

This clearly appears when we consider the at- 
titude of Irenseus to the four Gospels. He makes 

lc 'Das Neue Testament um das Jahr 200," p. no; "History of 
Dogma," II., 43. 



140 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

the acceptance of these books — no more, no fewer 
— a final test of orthodoxy. But everything that 
we have discovered in our previous investigation 
is a preparation for just that attitude toward the 
Gospels; and no reader of Justin, for example, 
has any reason to be surprised by what he finds 
in Irenseus. Tatian's Diatessaron, composed about 
170, is an incontrovertible evidence of the recep- 
tion of all four Gospels as early as the youth 

of Irenaeus. A fragment from the 
B. D» 170 

writings of Apollinaris of Hierapo- 

lis confirms this testimony, if it needed confirma- 
tion. Speaking of the celebration of Easter, he 
says : " Some say that the Lord ate the lamb with 
his disciples on the fourteenth [of Nisan], and 
suffered himself on the great day of unleavened 
bread; and they state that Matthew's narrative 
is in accordance with their view ; while it follows 
that their view is at variance with the law, and 
according to them the Gospels seem to disagree." 
The Gospels are here spoken of as a definite col- 
lection of books, well known and generally recog- 
nized ; and, of course, the only Gospel that seems 
to disagree with Matthew's about the time of our 
Lord's supper with his disciples is John's. So 
fixed is this notion of four Gospels from this time 



THE PROVISIONAL CANON 141 

onward, that we are able to make it a sort of 
chronological landmark, by which we may decide 
the date of other writings. For example, when 
we find the so-called second Epistle of Clement 
quoting from the Gospel according to the Egyp- 
tians as if it were canonical, we can safely infer 
that this homily is earlier than the time of 
Irenaeus. 1 

One thing should be noted before we pass 
from Irenseus to the other testimonies of this 
period. This Father was in youth a pupil of 
Polycarp, who had in turn been taught by the 
Apostle John. Inasmuch as Polycarp suffered 
in 155, according to the best reckoning, at the 
age of eighty-six, he must have been born about 
a. d. 69. These two lives spanned nearly the 
entire history of Christianity to the close of the 
second century. There must have been many 
such cases. 2 Yet we are asked to accept as a 
probable hypothesis this: that a lot of forged 

1 We have in Origen's " Commentary on Luke " an interesting con- 
firmation of the second century testimonies: "As in the Old Testa- 
ment the charisma of distinguishing between spirits prevailed, so 
now in the New Covenant many have desired to write the Gospels, 
but the ' good bankers ' have not accepted all, but have chosen 
some from among them. . . The Church of God gives preference to 
four only." 

2 For an impressive calculation of the possibilities of tradition dur- 
ing the second century, see Gregory on the Canon, pp. 159-162. 



142 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

writings were successfully foisted on the churches 
of the second century, in spite of the presence 
in them of many intelligent men who had every 
opportunity to learn the truth about these writ- 
ings and every motive to do so. This is to demand 
that we believe a greater miracle than any re- 
corded in the Scriptures, which the same scholars 
who propound this hypothesis as one man reject. 
This collection of twenty books may be very 
properly called the " Provisional " Canon, on con- 
dition that we do not permit that name to connote 
the idea that the Church was, as yet, consciously 
engaged in the process of forming a Canon. That 
idea did not clearly emerge into the consciousness 
of Christendom until long after the time of Ire- 
nseus. Nor must we permit this name to connote 
the equally erroneous idea that no other books 
were at this time received as Scripture. At the 
risk of wearisome repetition, it must be said again 
that there were a considerable number of such 
books received by some and rejected by others, 
some of which were afterward admitted into the 
Canon, while others were ultimately rejected. 
The story of that sifting process will be told in 
subsequent chapters. For our present purposes 
we call by the title of the Provisional Canon only 



THE PROVISIONAL CANON 1 43 

those books about which there was never any- 
serious question among Christians — quod semper, 
quod ubique, quod ab omnibus. 

And yet, even here a slight qualification should 
be made. The Provisional Canon was probably 
not precisely alike in both East and West. There 
were two forms: in the East the twenty books 
included First Peter and excluded Revelation; 
in the West just the reverse was the case — First 
Peter was not generally accepted while Revela- 
tion was. On this point Tertullian and the Mura- 
torian Fragment agree, as we shall see when we 
examine their testimony in detail. With this 
slight variation recognized, we shall find compe- 
tent testimony to this Canon from all parts of the 
Roman empire — from Gaul, from Italy, from 
Africa, from Alexandria, and the East. 

We have already had the testimony from Gaul 
— that of Irenseus — let us next consider that from 
the further extremity of the empire, Alexandria, 
since it is of the same date. Clement 1 (165-220) 
in his exposition of the principle that Scripture is 
the criterion by which truth and heresy are dis- 
tinguishable, says : " For we have, as the source 
of teaching, the Lord, both by the prophets, the 

1 Strom., vii. 16. 



144 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

Gospel, and the blessed apostles, ' in divers man- 
ners and at sundry times ' leading from the be- 
ginning of knowledge to the end." Clement 
quotes so profusely from our four Gospels that it 
would be almost possible to reconstruct entire 
chapters from his writings. The same is true of 
the Pauline Epistles. That he recognized four 
Gospels and no more as canonical, though he may 
have occasionally quoted from others, is proved 
by the following passage from his " Hypoty- 
poses," preserved by Eusebius, 1 who says: 

Again, in the same books, Clement has set down a tra- 
dition which he had received from the elders before him, 
in regard to the order of the Gospels, to the following 
effect. He says that the Gospels containing the geneal- 
ogies were written first, and that the Gospel according 
to Mark was composed in the following circumstances: 
" Peter having preached the word publicly at Rome, 
and by the Spirit proclaimed the gospel, those who 
were present, who were numerous, entreated Mark, 
inasmuch as he had attended him from an early period, 
and remembered what had been said, to write down 
what had been spoken. On his composing the Gospel, 
he handed it to those who had made the request to 
him; which coming to Peter's knowledge, he neither 
hindered nor encouraged. But John, the last of all, 
seeing that what was corporeal was set forth in the 
Gospels, on the entreaty of his intimate friends, and 
inspired by the Spirit, composed a spiritual Gospel." 

1 H. E., vi. 14. 



THE PROVISIONAL CANON I45 

That Clement received also First Peter is 
clearly evident from more than a score of quota- 
tions that he makes from it, while from First 
John he quotes a dozen times — in every case 
manifestly treating both books as Scripture. 
There can be hardly a doubt that he also recog- 
nized as canonical more than the books of the 
Provisional Canon — at least Hebrews, James, 
Jude, and Revelation. 

Harnack, 1 however, will not admit that Clem- 
ent speaks for the Alexandrine Church. This in- 
sistence that when an Eastern writer speaks, he 
speaks for himself alone, agrees badly with the 
assumption that whenever a Western writer 
speaks he speaks for the Roman Church. Such 
unfair treatment of testimony is not deliberate, 
of course, but it is nevertheless quite characteris- 
tic of the mental operations of a certain historical 
school, and vitiates not a few of their conclu- 
sions. There is no good reason assignable for 
refusing to regard Clement as fairly representa- 
tive of the Alexandrine opinions of his time, the 
closing decades of the second century. 

That other parts of the East substantially 
agreed with Alexandria we have testimony, not 

1 Dogma, II., 59, 60. 
K 



I46 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

so complete as might be desired, but unmistakable 
in its character. Theophilus of Antioch composed 
a treatise in three books, dedicated 
to a friend named Autolycus, whom 
he endeavored to convince of the truth of Chris- 
tianity. He i.s speaking of the origin of Christ: 
" And hence the holy writings teach us, and all 
the Spirit-bearing men, one of whom, John, says, 
' In the beginning was the Word, and the Word 
was with God.' " This is the first instance now 
extant of the quotation of the fourth Gospel ac- 
companied by the author's name. And, of course, 
if the fourth Gospel was accepted by Theophilus, 1 
there can be no doubt about the other three, es- 
pecially as he also quotes from Matthew. Else- 
where Theophilus gives evidence of knowing and 
using as Scripture eight of the Pauline Epistles, 
which necessarily implies like knowledge of the 
rest, and he quotes from Acts and First Peter. 
The only book of the Provisional Canon that can 
be said not to be positively attested by his writ- 
ings is First John, and there is a dubious refer- 
ence to 1 John 2 : 20 in his saying, " Wherefore 
we are called Christians on this account, because 
we are anointed with the oil of God." 2 Like 



CANON I47 

evidences of the acceptance of the same books is 
found in the writings of Athenagoras, an Athe- 
nian philosopher, belonging to about the same 
date. 

Tertullian, in time the last of the witnesses to 
the Provisional Canon, is by far the most precise 
and convincing in his testimony. His treatise 
" Against Marcion " was written in or about the 
year 207. After insisting on the authority of 
Luke's Gospel, as shown by the fact of its ac- 
ceptance in the apostolic churches from its publi- 
cation, he goes on to say : * " The same authority 
of the apostolic churches will afford evidence to 
the other Gospels also, which we possess equally 
through their means — I mean the Gospels of 
John and Matthew — whilst that which Mark 
published may be affirmed to be Peter's, whose 
interpreter Mark was. For even Luke's form of 
the Gospel men usually ascribe to Paul. And it 
may well seem that the works that disciples pub- 
lish belong to their masters." This is decisive as 
to the four Gospels, which he calls as a collec- 
tion 2 the " evangelical Instrument." His accept- 
ance of the Acts is made equally decisive by an 
elaborate comparison of that book with Paul's 

1 iv. 2. 2 iv. 5. 



I48 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

Epistle to the Galatians. 1 In the same treatise he 

recognizes distinctly thirteen Epistles of Paul, 

and makes it a reproach to Marcion that the 

latter has not only mutilated their text but their 

number, by rejecting: the letters to 
B. 2>. 207 

Timothy and Titus. 2 The First 

Epistle of John (4 : 1-3) he quotes emphatically 
and by name, with a long discussion of the Anti- 
christ. Indeed, First Peter is the only book that 
Tertullian 3 does not give an emphatic attestation 
by name. This he clearly quotes but once, and 
in a writing of doubtful genuineness. 

Tertullian also marks the giving of a definite 
name to the Canon, which it has ever since borne. 
The early Fathers give no specific name to the 
collection of apostolic books that they recognized 
as Scripture. Theophilus of Antioch calls them 
" the holy Scriptures," the " divine word." 
Clement of Alexandria alludes to them as " the 
Lord's Scriptures," " the divine Scriptures," the 
" holy books." Even so late as the time of Origen 
no name was established in the East, and his 
favorite formula is " the sacred books." The 
first use of the name that was finally adopted by 
the whole church belongs to the closing years of 

1 v. 2, 3. s v. 21. 3 Scorpiace, 12. 



THE PROVISIONAL CANON 1 49 

the second century and to the writings of Clem- 
ent : * " For God is the cause of all good things ; 
but of some primarily, as of the Old and New 
Testaments " (r^c re dta0yx7}<; xr^ nakaiw: xal r^c 
vea-z). The context leaves little room for rea- 
sonable doubt that the allusion is to the written 
Covenants, the sacred books received as authorita- 
tive. And if there should be any who doubt this, 
Clement's reference elsewhere to " the command- 
ments according to both Old and New Testa- 
ments " 2 removes all possibility of questioning his 
meaning. 

The definite acceptance of this term in the West 
— or rather, its Latin equivalent — was perhaps 
earlier than in the East. Tertullian is an unim- 
peachable witness to its use in Africa, at least. 
He protests against Marcion's attempt to set up 
two gods, " one for each Instrument, or Testa- 
ment, as it is more usual to call it." 3 Both words 
were in use in Roman law, the one meaning a 
written contract (sometimes a public document), 
and so being the more exact rendering of the 
Greek deadyxy, the other meaning a will. In his 
treatise " Against Praxeas," 4 Tertullian says : 
" If I fail in resolving this article by disputable 

1 Strom., i. 5. a Ibid., v. 1. 3 iv. 1. * c. 15. 



150 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

passages of the Old Testament, I will take out of 
the New Testament (de Novo Testamento) a 
confirmation of our view." 1 And he speaks re- 
peatedly of " both Testaments." 2 

We have reserved to the last, for more careful 
examination, the testimony to the Provisional 
Canon from Italy — a list of received apostolic 
writings contemporary with Irenseus, or possibly 
a little earlier. Ludovico Muratori, a distin- 
guished Italian scholar, discovered in the Am- 
brosian Library at Milan a manuscript of the 
seventh or eighth century, the history of which can 
be traced back to the great monastery at Bobbio, 
founded by Columban. He found among its con- 
tents some excerpts from the Fathers, including 
a list of the New Testament books, and published 
this list in his great work on Italian Antiquities, 
in 1740. It has been known since that time as 
the Muratorian Fragment or the Muratorian 
Canon. In its present form it is undoubtedly of 
Italian origin, and therefore becomes a compe- 
tent witness for our purpose. 

Besides being a fragment, mutilated at both 

1 c. 20; De Pud., 1. 

2 Novum Testamentum is also used by Tertullian in the sense of 
the New Covenant, i. e., the Christian dispensation (Adv. Prax., 31; 
Adv. Mar., iv. 22). The context always makes it possible to decide 
when he refers to the written Covenant. 



THE PROVISIONAL CANON 151 

ends, this document is written in barbarous Latin, 
and the copyist has disfigured the manuscript with 
many careless and gratuitous blunders. This 
makes the text as it stands unintelligible in many 
places and nonsensical in others, so that much con- 
jectural emendation is necessitated in order to get 
from it connected and sensible sentences. Many 
scholars have tried their hands at this task in 
turn, until something like a received text has been 
evolved. This document is of so great impor- 
tance, and is so characteristic of the age from 
which it has descended to us, that it has been 
given in full, as the first document of the Ap- 
pendix, in the best English dress practicable. 

Before examining its testimony to the Provi- 
sional Canon, there is at least one question to be 
considered. Can we fix approximately its date? 
There is a reference to the Roman episcopate of 
Pius as having been " very recently, in our times," 
that seems to make this possible. Unfortunately, 
however, there is very great uncertainty as to this 
same Pius. Some would put the close of his epis- 
copate as early as 142, while others would place it 
as late as 157. The latter date is now regarded 
as the more probable, and it thus becomes evident 
that the date of the list cannot well be earlier than 



152 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

160, while it may be as late as 200. The year 180 
may be taken as a reasonable mean. 

The list of books given is peculiar in several 
particulars. The four Gospels are first recog- 
nized ; this cannot be doubted after one reads the 
incomplete opening sentence, and the later allu- 
sion to John's as the fourth Gospel. Then follow 
the Acts, and thirteen Epistles of Paul, in this 
curious order : Corinthians, Ephesians, Galatians, 
Thessalonians, Romans, Philemon, Titus, First 
and Second Timothy ; after which come Jude," two 
of John," and the Apocalypses of John and Peter, 
at least the latter being recognized as of doubtful 
canonicity. The Book of Wisdom is mentioned 
before the Apocalypses, showing the uncertainty 
at this date concerning the Old Testament Canon 
to be quite as great as that regarding the New. 
Hebrews, James, and Third John are not men- 
tioned, and are therefore excluded; but this is 
what we might expect. What is a little surprising 
is the inclusion of Jude and the omission of any 
mention of First Peter. This omission is quite 
inexplicable, except on the theory of an accidental 
oversight on the part of the scribe, and several 
ingenious emendations have been proposed; but 
none of these explanations is convincing. 



THE PROVISIONAL CANON 1 53 

What was the object of this list? The same 
MS. from which it is taken gives, immediately 
after it, a fragment from a treatise of Ambrose, 
and an equally fragmentary translation from a 
work of Chrysostom is contained in it. From in- 
ternal evidence we might say with some confi- 
dence that we have here the commonplace book 
of some monk, who copied out from the writings 
of the Fathers brief extracts that had struck his 
fancy. This list can hardly be an official docu- 
ment, even though Holtzmann does say so con- 
fidently that it is " a list of canonical books of the 
Roman Church." * Rather, the unknown writer 
seems attempting to state the traditions of the 
churches regarding the origin of the canonical 
writings, and to give a list of those accepted in 
the churches with which he is acquainted. Ac- 
cordingly, Muratori attributed it to Gaius, on the 
ground of a statement by Eusebius that Gaius 
had left a list of the genuine apostolic writings. 
Bunsen thought it an ill-translated excerpt from a 
work of Hegesippus. 

The internal evidence of the Fragment itself 
makes sufficiently plain the purpose of the un- 

1 Ein Kanonverseichniss der romischen Kirche. " Introduction," 
p. 125. 



154 0UR NE W TESTAMENT 

known writer. As in the writings of Irenaeus, the 
test of canonicity is public reading in the churches 
— what writings are so read, what writings are 
fitted for such reading. The matter is thus looked 
at primarily from a liturgical point of view, not 
the historical or dogmatic, though historical and 
dogmatic considerations are appealed to as rea- 
sons for the decision pro or con in the case of 
certain books. The dogmatic bias is apparent in 
the saying that " it is not fitting to mix gall and 
honey." The historical element appears in the 
care taken to establish the apostolicity of the 
accepted writings, and to make it clear that John, 
in particular, was an eye-witness. 

When we examine the Fragment sentence by 
sentence, we find a score of phrases that seem to be 
Greek idioms, rather than Latin. This has led 
most critics to infer that we have here a transla- 
tion from a Greek original. 1 If that is admitted to 

1 Westcott, usually cautious, thinks " there can be little doubt that 
it is a version from the Greek," and later more positively declares 
that the " recurrence of Greek idioms appears conclusive to the 
fact that it is a translation" (pp. 214, 217). On the other hand, 
Reuss says: "The language, the rejection of the Epistle to the 
Hebrews, or at least the silence observed regarding it, everything 
down to the mention of the city of Rome and its bishop, betrays 
a Latin and probably African pen" (p. 102). Reuss thinks fel 
cum melle, a pun, which " seems of itself to prove that we possess 
the document in the original and not as a translation from the 
Greek" (p. 100, note). 



CANON 155 

be the case, an Eastern origin of the list is natur- 
ally suggested, and certainly the burden of proof 
is thrown upon those who maintain that the docu- 
ment originated in the West. The opinion of 
most scholars inclines, in spite of this natural pre- 
sumption, toward a Western origin, but it must 
be admitted that much of their reasoning is in- 
conclusive and some of it extraordinary. 

Some very incautious assertions have been 
made in order to weaken the presumption of an 
Eastern origin. Westcott, usually conservative 
almost to a fault, says that " Greek continued to 
be even at a later period, the ordinary language of 
the Roman church " ; - 1 and Doctor Gregory 2 
goes even further in asserting that " Greek con- 
tinued to be the Christian literary language at 
Rome until well into the third century." West- 
cott and Gregory are scholars unsurpassed in 
learning, but how can any man of this age, how- 
ever learned, know what was the language of the 
Roman church of the second century, when 
there is not a line surviving in any language that 
can be positively traced to that church in the 
second century? 

The poverty stricken condition of the Roman 

1 " Canon," p. 214. s " Canon," p. 120. 



I56 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

church of the first three centuries is not realized 
by those who have not looked into the matter. 
During all this time it did not produce a single 
great man, and no writings of any account have 
come down to us. The letter of Clement of 
Rome to the church of Corinth belongs to the 
first century, not the second. But, not to take 
advantage of a mere technicality, what may be in- 
ferred from the fact that Clement's letter is writ- 
ten in Greek? Why, merely this: that Clement 
was able to write in Greek, or that he had an 
amanuensis who could, and, as he was writing 
to a Greek-speaking church, that would not be 
able to understand a letter in Latin, he used 
Greek. Nothing more than this may be inferred. 
The letter has no bearing on the question of what 
language was ordinarily spoken or written by the 
members of the Roman church in Clement's time. 
Consider the matter from another point of 
view. The fact that Clement wrote in Greek can 
no more be cited as proof that Greek was the 
language of the Roman church, than the fact that 
Irenseus also wrote in Greek can be said to prove 
that the language of the church of Lyons was 
Greek. A Greek-speaking church in the Gaul of 
the second century! The use of Greek by Ire- 



THE "PROVISIONAL CANON 1 57 

nseus is sufficiently accounted for by the well- 
known fact that he was a native of Smyrna and 
Greek was his mother tongue. If we knew more 
about Clement we might find as satisfactory an 
explanation of his knowledge of Greek. 

Hegesippus (d. 180), who is often carelessly 
called a Roman writer, gives no help to the West- 
cott-Gregory hypothesis. He certainly visited 
Rome, but he was as certainly a native of the 
East, and there is no proof that he had any con- 
nection with the Roman church. Jerome * plainly 
understood, from the information accessible to 
him, that Hegesippus was only a sojourner in 
Rome. Nothing therefore can be argued from 
his writing in Greek as to the language of the 
Roman church. 

No inference can be drawn from the writings 
of Gaius that will strengthen the hypothesis. It 
is not certain that he was a presbyter or bishop 
or even a member of the church at Rome, though 
these things are often asserted. The earliest state- 
ment to that effect is not trustworthy, as it be- 
longs to the ninth century, being found in a work 
of Photius of Constantinople (d. 891). The one 
fact that we know about him, on the authority of 

1 De vir. III., c. xxii. 



I58 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

Eusebius, 1 is that he wrote a " Dialogue with 
Proclus," an account of his disputation with a 
heretic of that name in Rome, in the episcopate of 
Zephyrinus (201-219). The fragments of that 
writing that have been preserved are in Greek, 
but it is not certain that this was the original 
language. If it were, in spite of his apparently 
Roman name, Gaius may have been of Eastern 
origin — a guess that finds confirmation in one 
or two references to him in patristic literature. 
Nobody can say — or, rather, since some scholars 
have shown themselves capable of saying any- 
thing, nobody should say — even if it were estab- 
lished that Gaius was a member of the Roman 
church and wrote in Greek, that Greek is thereby 
proved to have been the language of the church. 
The fallacy of such an inference is one of which 
any tyro in logic should be ashamed. 

Nor does the fact that the Shepherd was writ- 
ten in Greek, and is said to have been written 
by the brother of a Roman bishop, prove that 
Greek was the language of the Roman church. 
It does not even tend to prove such a hypothesis, 
if we consider the character of the Shepherd. 
The book was composed, as its character makes 

1 H. E., ii. 25. 6. 



159 

clear, for the East, where Montanism was ra- 
ging, not for the West where it was not at all 
dangerous. The author understood Greek and 
wrote in that language, as best adapted to pro- 
cure the circulation of his book where it was 
needed. As a matter of fact, it was principally 
circulated in the East, because only there could 
it be widely read. Any one can easily satisfy 
himself how anti-Montanistic the Shepherd is, 
and appreciate the force of what has been said. 

A parallel case will make the matter plainer. 
The late Dr. George B. Taylor wrote a book on 
Italy while he was a pastor of a Baptist church 
in Rome, and wrote it in English for readers 
in America, but the language of his church is 
Italian, though there are a number of people in 
it who speak good English. Does not this show 
how rash is the inference that some would draw 
from the language of the Shepherd? Though it 
was written in Rome, and by one who may have 
been a member of the Roman church, no con- 
nection of the writing with the church can be 
shown, and in the absence of proof no one is 
entitled to call this a document of the Roman 
church, or cite it as evidence that Greek was the 
language of that church in the second century. 



l60 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

It ought not even to be asserted that Greek 
was the language of the Roman church in the 
apostolic age. Paul wrote his letter to the Romans 
in Greek it is true, but this may have been be- 
cause he was unable to write in Latin; and he 
knew that there were in the church enough Hel- 
lenistic Jews to interpret the letter to Latin- 
speaking brethren. 1 It is more than doubtful 
if this were true in the days of Clement. The 
closing chapters of the Acts indicate that from 
the coming of Paul to Rome the church received 
its chief additions from the Gentiles. The men- 
tion of converts even among Caesar's household 
(Phil. 4 : 22) in one of the Epistles of the cap- 
tivity, shows that Romans, even those of high 
station, were added to the church. That Greek 
continued after the apostolic age to be the lan- 
guage of the church, if it had ever been such, 
is a proposition so contrary to all that we might 
fairly expect as to be receivable only upon positive 
proof. 

Not only is there no proof available, but such 

1 Rome, as a cosmopolitan city, would have many Greeks among 
its citizens in the second century, and it is possible that a few such 
might be found in the Roman church. But how far this possibility 
is from warranting a conclusion that Greek was the official or literary 
language of the church needs no argument to convince any sober- 
minded reader. 



THE "PROVISIONAL" CANON l6l 

evidence as is extant warrants rather the belief 
that Greek was never the language, literary or 
other, of Rome, Christian or heathen, in any other 
sense than that in which French is the language 
of Rome to-day. Practically every educated 
Roman, and every one engaged in any sort of 
business, speaks French. French books are pub- 
lished in Rome. For " French " substitute 
" Greek," and Rome in the second century is 
described. The utmost that the known facts and 
plausible hypotheses will allow to be said, there- 
fore, is this : the circumstance that a document 
of the second century is written in Greek does 
not exclude the possibility that it might have 
been composed in Rome or somewhere in Italy. 
After the fourth century a Western origin of a 
Greek document would be an impossibility, unless 
it could be shown by good external evidence that 
it was composed by a Greek temporarily dwelling 
in Italy. 

When we look for positive evidence in favor 
of a Western origin of the Fragment, we find 
nothing but this sentence in the document itself : 
" The Shepherd moreover Hermas very recently 
wrote in the city of Rome, in our own times, 
while his brother Pius was occupying the chair 



1 62 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

of the Roman church." That is what some great 
scholars call proof! It does not require scholar- 
ship to test such reasoning. Let any reader of 
average common sense weigh the matter for 
himself, as he is perfectly competent to do. Let 
us take a parallel case from our own day. Sup- 
pose the reader should see in a book or news- 
paper this sentence : " The ' Letters of a Mer- 
chant to His Son ' were written in Boston by 
George Horace Lorimer, while his father was 
pastor of Tremont Temple." (As a matter of 
fact, they were written in Louisville, but the 
above sentence makes the parallel complete, and 
accuracy of fact is not material.) Would any- 
body reading that sentence dream of inferring 
that the newspaper or book in which it occurred 
was itself written or published in Boston? The 
sentence would suggest only that it was written 
by somebody who was familiar with the facts, 
and that might be anybody anywhere in the 
United States. So this remark in the Fragment 
about the composition of the Shepherd might be 
taken to imply that its author lived somewhere in 
Italy, were it not for the fact that the prominence 
of the church of Rome and the intercourse be- 
tween the Christian churches of the second cen- 



THE " PROVISIONAL " CANON 163 

tury, would very likely make such facts as these 
known as well in the East as in Italy. We must 
beware of reading later history into the second 
century, and assuming as then existing that mu- 
tual ignorance of each other which did prevail in 
East and West after the fourth century. 

To establish the Roman origin of the Fragment 
from this remark on the authorship of the Shep- 
herd, it must be assumed as a sound principle of 
literary criticism that any book was written in 
any place to which the author chose to refer! 
To call such reasoning puerile would be to bestow 
on it undeserved honor, for children are usually 
acute reasoners from such knowledge as they 
have. Much of the " brilliancy " of not a few 
" brilliant historical scholars " consists in their 
capacity to reason in this manner on one page, 
and then, a few pages further on, to assert as an 
undoubted fact what they have thus deduced. 1 

But even if it be conceded that this list was 
written in Rome — and this is conceding much — 
what is there to connect it with the Roman 
church? That is another great leap, in utter de- 

1 Sanday puts the case very mildly when he says of Harnack: " He 
sorely needs to learn to weigh degrees of probability, and not to 
build upon pure conjecture as if it were certain " (" Inspiration," 
p. 25, note). 



164 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

fiance of all rules of logic. Yet a recent writer 
on the Canon has gone so far as not merely to 
ascribe this document to the Roman church, but 
to say that the matter is " beyond a doubt " 1 — 
that " we feel in it the pulse-beat of the authority 
of Rome." Let every reader read again the entire 
document and see if he can feel any such throb! 
Let him say for himself what evidence he finds in 
it of connection with the Roman church. 

In favor of a Western origin it has also been 
pleaded that an Eastern writer would not be 
likely either to know that Pius was bishop of 
Rome, or to date events from his episcopate. 
Both of these assumptions are without support, 
one of them is in the very teeth of fact. As we 
have seen, the presumption is rather that facts 
about the Roman church would be known in the 
East during the second century. Why should 
not the name be generally known of one who was 
for fifteen years bishop of so important a church 
as that of the capital of the empire? And es- 
pecially as his brother had written a book that 
was of so extraordinary popularity in the East 
that many received it for Scripture? So far 
from there being any improbability of such 

1 Ferris, pp. 222, 227. 



THE " PROVISIONAL " CANON 165 

knowledge in the East, we see there is a strong 
probability in its favor. 

And then, the mention of the name of Pius in 
the Fragment is not " dating " the document, in 
the sense in which documents were dated in later 
centuries by Roman episcopates. The mention 
of Pius has quite another object. " The Shep- 
herd moreover Hermas very recently wrote in 
the city of Rome, in our own times [that dates 
the document], while his brother Pius was oc- 
cupying the chair of the Roman church, and so 
it is fitting that it should be read, indeed, but not 
publicly in church." " And so," because the book 
was written by the brother of Bishop Pius, " it 
is fitting that it should be read " privately, as an 
edifying book, " but not publicly in the church " 
as Scripture. The words added do not change, 
they merely bring out more clearly the meaning 
of the text. To call this dating the writing from 
the episcopate of Pius is again to read later 
history into documents of the second century — an 
ever-present temptation against which we need to 
be vigilantly on guard. 

This Fragment is the corner-stone of those who 
maintain that our Canon is of Roman origin, and 
that a Canon made in Alexandria would have 



l66 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

been something very different. This is why it 
has been subjected to this critical examination at 
greater length than its real importance deserves. 
If the corner-stone thus crumbles into dust at a 
touch, what can be hoped of the superstructure? 
Who can speak for Alexandria if not Origen and 
Athanasius? — the one the greatest scholar, the 
other the greatest theologian and bishop that 
city and church ever produced. Origen seems 
to have accepted all the books of our Canon, and 
no others, though we have no formal list from 
him. He says explicitly that there were doubts 
in his day about Second Peter and Second and 
Third John, and he does not believe that Paul 
wrote Hebrews, but he expresses no doubts as to 
the canonicity of any of them. He believes for 
himself that the Shepherd is inspired, but does 
not claim that it is canonical. As for Athanasius, 
the first formal list in our possession, that exactly 
corresponds to our canonical books, is his list 
of the books, canonical in his day, in his Festal 
Letter of 367. 

Now, if this list of the Fragment, by an un- 
known author, whose place of writing is only 
guessed to have been Rome, is to be regarded as 
an attempt by the Roman church to close the 



CANON 167 

Canon, a fortiori the list of Athanasius must be 
the attempt of Alexandria to close the Canon. 
And what is more, the Roman attempt failed, 
while that of Athanasius was successful. Where- 
fore, it is proved " beyond a doubt " that our 
present Canon is not Roman but Alexandrine. 
The logic is perfect, the conclusion is irresistible 
—and utterly absurd! 



VI 
THE " DISPUTED " BOOKS 



VI 



PROGRESS in the formation of the Canon 
during the third century was surprisingly 
slow. At first examination, the Fathers of that 
period seem to disclose little more than a gain of 
clearness and precision of statement over those 
of the last two decades of the second century. 
Yet perhaps we ought not to be surprised at the 
little progress made, for an explanation lies close 
at hand. Heresy, which we have seen to be a 
stimulus in the formation of the Canon, hastened 
the process only up to a certain point: it caused 
a more speedy apprehension and statement of the 
conclusions in which the Catholic Church found 
that a general agreement already existed. Be- 
yond that, heresy was undoubtedly a retarding 
influence, making the church more conservative, 
and causing every book that was not already gen- 
erally received with practical unanimity to be 
closely scrutinized before it was finally accepted. 
We find a steadily growing tendency among 
the Fathers to assert the inspiration and authority 
of the Scriptures, as the general principle un- 

171 



1^2 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

derlying the acceptance of the apostolic writings, 
as authoritative. Tertullian's later writings, ex- 
tending down to the year 220, abound in such as- 
sertions, most notable among which perhaps is 
this : * " Scripture is of God, nature is of God, dis- 
cipline is of God — whatever is contrary to these is 
not of God." This is a notable utterance, not only 
for what it says of Scripture, but for the association 
of Scripture with two other co-ordinate sources 
of authority. Origen is yet more explicit, and for 
the first time roundly asserts the equality of the 
New Testament with the Old : "It was the same 
Holy Spirit who was in the prophets and apos- 
tles." 2 " The Scriptures were written by the 
Spirit of God," he tells us, and he apparently 
held to some dictation theory. Often he speaks 
of the " superhuman element of the thought," of 
" the divinity of the Scripture," of a " careful 
study of the divine word." The last two cen- 
turies have hardly produced a theory of inspira- 
tion more " high " than Origen's. 

From Cyprian we learn the additional and most 
interesting fact that in his time the New Testa- 
ment had become the arbiter of all disputes. The 

1 De V eland. Virg., 16. 

2 De Prin., ii. 7; iv. 1. 7; C. Cel., vii. 60. 



THE DISPUTED BOOKS 1 73 

question of the treatment of the lapsi, those who 
had denied Christ in the stress of persecution, 
was a most perplexing one, and it was thus 
decided : 

According, however, to what has before been decided 
... a large number of bishops, we met together; and 
the divine Scriptures being brought forward on both 
sides, we balanced the decision with wholesome modera- 
tion. . . And lest perchance the bishops in Africa should 
seem unsatisfactory, we wrote also to Rome, to Cor- 
nelius our colleague, concerning this thing, who himself 
also holding a council with very many bishops, con- 
curred in the same opinion as we held, with equal 
gravity and wholesome moderation. 1 

This extract from Cyprian has a double in- 
terest, as showing not only the position to which 
the Scriptures of the New Testament had at- 
tained as an authority, but also the precise limits 
of the deference that was paid by the churches 
of Africa to the church of Rome and its bishop, 
about 250. " What obstinacy is that," says the 
same Father, " or what presumption to prefer 
human tradition to divine ordinance, and not to 
observe that God is indignant and angry as often 
as human tradition relaxes and passes by the 
divine precepts." 2 A reader of Cyprian's Epis- 
tles cannot help concluding that, while he thus 

x Ep. li. 6. 2 Ep. lxxiii. 3. 



174 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

shows himself correct in theory, placing the writ- 
ten word above all mere tradition, he is not 
always consistent in practice — in particular, 
where he justifies " clinic " baptism, and the 
baptism of new-born babes. 

Hippolytus, another Father of this century, 
speaks what may be left as the final word — 
for nothing could be more explicit, and it would 
be merely wearisome to accumulate examples, 
though there is no lack of them. He says: 
" There is, brethren, one God, the knowledge of 
whom we gain from the holy Scriptures, and 
from no other source. For just as a man, if he 
wishes to be skilled in the wisdom of this world, 
will find himself unable to get at it in any other 
way than by mastering the dogmas of philoso- 
phers, so all of us who wish to practise piety will 
be unable to learn its practice from any other 
quarter than the oracles of God." * In taking 
leave of this matter, it may not be without in- 
terest to observe that this Father, in his de- 
scription of the end of the world, says, " The 
public service of God shall be extinguished, 
psalmody shall cease, the reading of the Scrip- 
tures shall not be heard " — an unconscious testi- 

1 Against Noetus, 9. 



THE (( DISPUTED^ BOOKS 1 75 

mony to the place that the reading of the apostolic 
writings had come to fill in the minds of Chris- 
tians. 

Our next positive landmark in the formation 
of the Canon is in the first half of the fourth 
century, in the list of New Testament books given 
by Eusebius, not as a critic, but as a historian. 
He names as the accepted writings (bfxoloyou- 
lieva) : the four Gospels, Acts, the Epistles of 
Paul, First John, First Peter, Revelation. 1 As to 
the last named, he indicates some personal mis- 
giving, but nevertheless testifies to its general 
acceptance. Among the disputed writings (dvrt- 
hyofieva ) , " which are nevertheless recognized 
by many," he gives James, Jude, Second Peter, 
Second and Third John. In an earlier passage 
in his History, Eusebius had said that " Paul's 
fourteen epistles are well known and undis- 
puted," and though he immediately added, " it is 
not right to overlook the fact that some have re- 
jected the Epistle to the Hebrews," he evidently 
regards any such opposition as having virtually 
ceased, or he could not speak of fourteen Epistles 
as " undisputed." 2 

The sum of progress with regard to the Canon, 

X H. E., iii. 25. * Ibid., iii. 3. 5. 



1^6 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

made in a century ending with the writing of the 
great History of Eusebius, may be said to be 
this: The Epistle to the Hebrews has been defi- 
nitely added to the twenty books of the Pro- 
visional Canon, and the right of the Apocalypse 
to a place in the collection, though still ques- 
tioned by " some," is virtually vindicated and 
has won the assent of the great majority. The 
testimony of Eusebius is the more valuable and 
convincing, in that he does not hesitate to set 
before his readers all the evidence known to 
him against the canonicity of these two writings. 
We have already sufficiently considered the 
case against the Apocalypse, and have noted the 
final decision in its favor, delayed some decades 
after the time of Eusebius. It will be necessary, 
and interesting as well, to trace the vicissitudes of 
the Epistle to the Hebrews, which did not reach an 
unquestioned place in the Canon without much 
opposition and long searching. One reason for 
the slow progress toward acceptance may have 
been that the letter was evidently addressed, not 
to Hebrews in general, but to a single society. 
Westcott thinks the church was in or near Jerusa- 
lem, but against this is the fact that the writing 
seems to have been first known in the West. As 



BOOKS 177 

we have seen, there are numerous and unmis- 
takable traces of this Epistle in the letter of 
Clement of Rome, several quotations, and many 
allusions that constitute a moral certainty of the 
inference that Hebrews was well known to 
Clement. If the society of Hebrews to which 
the letter was addressed was in or near Rome, 
this would be easy to understand; but if so far 
east as Jerusalem it is inexplicable. There are, 
to be sure, what are thought to be traces of the 
use of this Epistle in Polycarp and Justin, but the 
two generations that separate these writers from 
Clement would be time enough to allow for a 
knowledge of the writing to extend to the East. 
Though these early writers receive the Epistle 
as apostolic and authoritative, none of them says 
anything about its authorship. 

The earliest mention of Hebrews in connection 
with its authorship is by Clement of Alexandria. 
Quoting from a lost work of that Father, the 
" Hypotyposes," Eusebius says : " And he says 
that the Epistle to the Hebrews is Paul's, and was 
written in the Hebrew language; but that Luke, 
having carefully translated it, gave it to the 
Greeks, and hence the same coloring in expression 
is discernible in this Epistle and the Acts; and 

M 



I78 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

that the name, Paul an Apostle, was very properly 
not prefixed, for he says, that writing to the 
Hebrews, who were prejudiced against him and 
suspected, he with great wisdom did not repel 
them in the beginning by putting down his 
name." 1 This is evidently an attempt of Clement 
to account for two things that constitute almost 
insuperable objections to receiving this as an 
Epistle of Paul : the difference in the style from 
the other letters of Paul, which a Greek would 
feel much more keenly than we can, and secondly, 
the absence of Paul's name, in defiance of his 
well-established custom. We need not stop to 
point out the failure of this well-meant and even 
ingenious attempt to make the virtual Pauline 
authorship of the Epistle probable, further than 
to say that it is strange that one to whom Greek 
was vernacular should not have seen that the 
style of Hebrews is no more like Luke's than it 
is like Paul's. The real point is that the Epistle 
was now beginning to be ascribed to Paul, as a 
ground for placing it in the Canon. 

The Greek Fathers generally agreed that He- 
brews was to be received as canonical, but they 
did not at once agree with Clement as to the Paul- 

1 H. E., vi. 14. 



THE DISPUTED BOOKS 1 79 

ine authorship. Again we have to rely on a quo- 
tation by Eusebius 1 from the lost " Homilies " of 
Origen on Hebrews : 

That the verbal style of the Epistle ... is not rude 
like the language of the apostle, who acknowledged 
himself " rude in speech," that is, in expression, but that 
its diction is purer Greek, any one who has the power 
to discern differences of phraseology will acknowledge. 
Moreover, that the thoughts of the Epistle are admira- 
ble, and not inferior to the acknowledged apostolic 
writings any one who carefully examines the apostolic 
text will admit. . . If I gave my opinion, I should say 
that the thoughts are those of the apostle, but the 
diction and phraseology are those of some one who 
remembered the apostolic teachings, and wrote down 
at his leisure what had been said by his teacher. 
Therefore if any church holds that this Epistle is by 
Paul, let it be commended for this. For not without 
reason have the ancients handed it down as Paul's. 
But who wrote the Epistle, in truth, God knows. The 
statement of some who have gone before us is that 
Clement, bishop of the Romans, wrote the Epistle, and 
of others that Luke, the author of the Gospel and the 
Acts, wrote it. 

Clement and Origen agree in accepting the 
Epistle as apostolic, probably Pauline in sub- 
stance, and neither has the least doubt as to its 
canonicity. Athanasius accepted it as one of the 
" fourteen Epistles of the Apostle Paul," and it 
is quoted as Paul's by such Fathers of the Greek 

1 H. E., vi. 25. 11-14. 



l8o OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

Church as Didymus, Cyril of Alexandria, Cyril 
of Jerusalem, Basil, Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory 
Nazianzen, Epiphanius, Theodore of Mopsues- 
tia, and Chrysostom. 1 

In the West, however, where the writing seems 
to have been known earliest, and probably not as 
a Pauline Epistle at first, there was grave doubt 
as to its canonicity. Tertullian was inclined to ac- 
cept it, as apostolic, though not Pauline : " For 
there is extant withal an Epistle to the Hebrews 
under the name of Barnabas — a man sufficiently 
accredited by God, as being one whom Paul has 
stationed next to himself [here he quotes I Cor. 
15 : 6]. . . And, of course, the Epistle of Bar- 
nabas is more generally received among the 
churches than that apocryphal Shepherd of 
adulterers." 2 The bitterness in the last sentence 
is doubtless due to the anti-Montanistic tone of 
the Shepherd. It might be doubtful whether 
Tertullian refers here to the Epistle to the He- 
brews or the document known to us as the 
Epistle of Barnabas, but he removes all possible 
doubt by going on to quote at length from chap. 

1 Any who may be interested in verifying these statements will 
find abundant references for that purpose in Westcott's " Commen- 
tary on Hebrews," p. 72. 

2 De Pud., 20. 



BOOKS l8l 

6 of our canonical Hebrews. It is worth while 
noting as we pass that Tertullian proposes as the 
test of canonicity, the reception of a book by the 
churches, the test that we have found to be de- 
cisive from the beginning. 

Cyprian ignores Hebrews, and in his extant 
writings Irenseus does not quote from it, but we 
have the statement of Eusebius that in two books 
of his that are lost he quoted from the writing 
and also from the Wisdom of Solomon. Gaius, 
the Roman presbyter whom we have had occa- 
sion to mention before, according to Eusebius 
mentioned " only thirteen epistles of the holy 
apostle, not counting that to the Hebrews with 
the others." * And the historian adds, " Unto 
our day there are some among the Romans who 
do not consider this a work of the apostle." 

The East and the West differed in judgment 
a long time on the question of the admission of 
Hebrews to the Canon, largely because they had 
different standards of canonicity. The Alex- 
andrine Fathers, and those of the East generally, 
considered sufficient the test of " apostolicity," 
by which they meant proceeding from the apos- 
tolic circle and agreeing with apostolic doctrine, 

*H. E., vi. 20. 



1 82 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

while the West laid more stress on actual apos- 
tolic authorship. Alexandria, therefore, satis- 
fied of the virtual apostolicity of Hebrews, 
though uncertain as to the precise authorship, had 
no hesitation about accepting the book. Rome, 
on the other hand, having well-founded doubts 
about the authorship, hesitated to accept the book. 
The judgment of Jerome may be taken to ex- 
press the final view of the West : " It does not 
matter who is the author of the Epistle to the 
Hebrews, since it is the work of a churchman, 
and is constantly read in the churches." 1 In this 
the West distinctly abandoned its first view, and 
yielded to the insistence of the East. Those who 
hold that our Canon is a Roman production, and 
that the East would have produced a far dif- 
ferent one, have in this history of the Epistle to 
the Hebrews a hard nut to crack. If they are 
prudent they will let it severely alone. 

We discover from Eusebius that one other step 
has been taken, besides settling permanently the 
status of Hebrews and the Apocalypse : out of the 
mass of other writings that were received in some 
localities or quoted by some Fathers as Scrip- 
ture, there was gradually separated in the third 

1 Ep. cxxix. 



THE " DISPUTED " BOOKS 183 

century another group which, though not defi- 
nitely accepted as canonical, were now accepted by 
" many." These were the very books whose ul- 
timate addition completed the Canon. It becomes 
important, therefore, to consider each of these 
books in turn, and to discover, if we can, what 
reasons or influences hindered their early recep- 
tion, and what led to their final acceptance. 

The first to be considered is the Epistle of 
James. There could not well be a greater dif- 
ference between students of Christian literature 
than we find among the recent critics regarding 
this Epistle. Julicher and Spitta are good exam- 
ples; both stand in the first rank of historical 
critics, and each urges with equal confidence a 
view that cannot be reconciled with the other's. 
Julicher believes that the book is a homily in the 
form of a letter, " consisting of separate chapters 
merely strung together, and treating of certain 
questions of Christian life and feeling." In this 
judgment of the literary structure of James, 
Julicher is probably right, but why does such a 
structure discredit an apostolic origin of the 
writing ? Who is entitled at this day to lay down 
the law as to how an apostle must write, in order 
to have his work accepted as authentic by this 



184 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

cultivated twentieth century? But James, Jii- 
licher goes on to say, could not have attained 
such fluency in Greek (why not? since other 
apostles did), and could not have composed an 
epistle that makes religion consist in morality; 
and, worst of all, the passage 2 : 14-16 is " whol- 
ly inconceivable as coming from the mouth of 
James in the last years of his life." Since many 
scholars have so conceived it, Julicher must be 
wrong in saying that it is inconceivable, but let 
that pass. The passage in question is a polemic 
against Paul's doctrine of justification, says Jii- 
licher, and proves the writing to be considerably 
post-Pauline. Harnack agrees with Julicher in 
the main, and both would make the date of the 
Epistle about contemporary with the Shepherd, 
say 160. 

There is, however, an objection to this theory 
that ought to prove insuperable. A reader of the 
Shepherd must see that a great change has come 
over the church since the days of the apostles. 
Simplicity has given place to formalism; the 
church is not a simple society of the redeemed, 
but a highly organized corporate entity ; baptism 
is no longer the mere symbol of a spiritual fact, 
but the means by which a spiritual change is 



THE " DISPUTED " BOOKS 185 

accomplished — a sacrament ; in short, martyrdom 
has ceased to be a simple witness for Christ, but 
has become the chief glory to which a Christian 
can look forward. Now let one turn from the 
Shepherd and read James; if he has any spirit- 
ual apprehension whatever, he will feel instantly 
that he is breathing a different atmosphere — the 
church and its teaching are simple, practical, not 
formal and fanatical. Julicher thinks that to 
make James the earliest of the New Testament 
Epistles, as Meyer does in his Commentary, is 
" grotesque." Nothing could well be more 
" grotesque " than to make the Shepherd and 
James contemporary documents. There lies be- 
tween them at least a century of change and 
degeneration. 

Spitta shows more insight into the real char- 
acter of the Epistle, but he goes to the opposite 
extreme : he holds it to be a Jewish composition, 
belonging to the century before Christ, that has 
been adapted to a Christian use. That it is a 
Jewish composition, in the sense that it was com- 
posed by a Jew, is certainly true, and that Jewish 
doctrine has been given a Christian turn is as 
evident; but that is exactly what we ought to 
expect in an Epistle written by James, in view of 



1 86 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

what the New Testament shows his character and 
position among the early disciples to have been. 
The one passage that seems most in keeping with 
Spitta's hypothesis (2:2) is not inexplicable. 
This very word " synagogue " is used in the 
Shepherd to denote a Christian assembly, which 
shows that such use, though undoubtedly rare in 
Christian literature, is not unexampled. 1 At the 
time James wrote, the " ecclesia " and the " syna- 
gogue " had not been so completely differentiated, 
either in name or in character, as they afterward 
became — that hypothesis (that fact rather) solves 
all the difficulty. And in the last resort, it will be 
hard to persuade the Christian world that the 
book of the entire New Testament, that shows the 
most extraordinary resemblance to the Sermon 
on the Mount, could have been the product of the 
generation before Christ. 

All of this is of course foreign to our main 
purpose, unless it can be made to throw some light 
on the canonicity of James, which is a question 
in itself quite independent of questions of au- 
thorship and date. But it is self-evident that, if 
James did not write before 160, his book could 
not have been quoted by Clement of Rome, in 

1 Mand., n. 9. 



BOOKS 187 

97. There are, however, a number of cases in 
which Clement seems to use the phraseology of 
James, the most notable being " Love covers 
a multitude of sins." Some critics are inclined 
to sneer at such echoing phrases as no real evi- 
dence that a writing existed and was known, but 
can such an objection be seriously maintained? 
When we meet, in any book published since 1870, 
the phrases " honest doubt," " faultily faultless," 
" the parliament of man," the " claims of long 
descent," we do not hesitate an instant to say, 
These are echoes of Tennyson. And if we met 
one of them in a book published before 1850 — as 
matter of fact we do not — we should be very 
much surprised indeed. Likewise, when we read 
" lost leader," " purer than the purest," " a cen- 
tury of sonnets " and " the first fine, careless rap- 
ture," we say unhesitatingly, That's Browning. 
We never pause to consider the possibility, say 
one chance in ten million, that somebody else may 
have hit accidentally on just those collocations of 
words, but we regard them as conscious quota- 
tions from well-known poets, or the unconscious 
use of that common mintage which passes cur- 
rent everywhere, though few persons know whose 
is the image and superscription. It is surpris- 



1 88 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

ing that scholars who insist, as a primary prin- 
ciple, that we should treat the Bible " like any 
other book," should continually reason about 
biblical literature as they would not about any 
other. 

The Didache and Epistle of Barnabas contain 
similar allusions to James, especially the words 
describing the way of death, nearly every one of 
which is from the vocabulary of James. The 
Shepherd has so many correspondences with 
James that Spitta is moved to consider the later 
writing also of Jewish origin, with Christian in- 
terpolations. These correspondences are so 
numerous and so striking as to make it nearly 
certain, either that the Shepherd quotes from 
James or James from the Shepherd. Few 
students of both documents will have any doubt 
which is the original. Even Jiilicher and Har- 
nack, who make James contemporary with the 
Shepherd, do not hint that the Epistle is the 
derived writing. 

If the book was apostolic and was known so 
early as this sort of evidence would imply, how 
came it to be so late in winning general accept- 
ance? It is evident that epistles addressed to 
particular churches had better opportunities for 



THE " DISPUTED " BOOKS 189 

speedy circulation than those of a more general 
nature. Not only would the church addressed 
prize a letter written primarily for its members 
more than one intended for all Christians, but 
the church would take more pains to make such 
a letter known to the churches with which it 
was in correspondence. Correspondence between 
the churches began even in apostolic times, and 
we learn from an interesting passage in the 
Shepherd how extensive were the arrangements 
for maintaining such communications and the 
sharing of letters and other Christian literature : 

After that I saw a vision in my house, and that old 
woman came and asked me if I had yet given the book 
to the presbyters. And I said that I had not. And then 
she said, " You have done well, for I have some words 
to add." But when I finish all the words, all the elect 
will then become acquainted with them through you. 
You will therefore write two books, and you will send 
the one to Clemens and the other to Grapte. And 
Clemens will send his to foreign countries, for per- 
mission has been granted him to do so. And Grapte 
will admonish the widows and orphans. But you will 
read the words in this city, along with the presbyter3 
who preside over the church. 1 

Although the episcopate was well established 
at the time the Shepherd was written, and we are 
assured by the Muratorian Fragment that Her- 

1 Vis., ii. 4. 



I90 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

mas was brother of the bishop of Rome, it is the 
presbyters who have charge of the sacred books 
and determine what shall be publicly read in the 
church. This does not imply, of course, that 
the bishop would have no voice in the matter ; he 
would naturally have a powerful influence in de- 
ciding such a question, but he was no autocrat, 
settling all such disputed questions by his ipse 
dixit. We shall have occasion to recur to this 
matter later. 

Even if the Epistle of James were known 
among the Eastern churches, it might make its 
way slowly elsewhere. It seems to have been the 
loyal recognition of the East that finally estab- 
lished its position in the Canon. Origen is the 
first Father who is known to have quoted the 
book as Scripture and as the work of James. In 
his commentary on John 19 : 6 he says, " For 
if it is said faith exists apart from works, such 
[faith] is dead, as we read in the Epistle that 
goes by the name of James." But though the last 
clause might be taken to imply a doubt regarding 
the authorship of the book, Origen frequently 
quotes it as Scripture, and in his list of canonical 
books he includes this Epistle. Cyril of Jerusa- 
lem gives it in his list of sacred books for cate- 



BOOKS T9I 

chumens, as also do Athanasius and Epiphanius, 
while Chrysostom highly esteemed the book. 
Theodore of Mopsuestia alone among the Greek 
Fathers, seems to have rejected it, though in his 
case the testimony comes at second-hand through 
another writer. 1 Didymus, who died in 394, left 
a commentary on all the catholic Epistles, which 
testifies to the fact of their acceptance in Alexan- 
dria at that time, and this conclusion is confirmed 
by the canon of Athanasius. 

It is the fashion among critics to speak of a 
hesitation in the West about accepting James as 
canonical. One can find no ground for this state- 
ment, however, except the omission of the book 
from the Muratorian Fragment, and we have al- 
ready seen how uncertain a " Western " authority 
this is. But the Shepherd is also Western, ac- 
cording to the Fragment at least, and the Shep- 
herd undoubtedly recognizes James as Scripture; 
and the Fragment recognizes the Shepherd as a 
witness superior to itself, in antiquity, if not in 
authority. A little later Tertullian quotes the 
Epistle, and his example is followed by Lac- 
tantius. All doubts may be said to have ceased 

1 See Westcott, 451. Leontius of Byzantium, at the close of the 
sixth century, tells us that Theodore rejected " the Epistle of James 
and other of the Catholic Epistles." 



192 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

with the generation of Jerome 1 and Augustine, 
for these Fathers quote the book freely like the 
other Scriptures, and definitely name it as a 
member of the Canon. 

The second and third Epistles of John ought 
never to have raised any question of authenticity. 
Their style is so strikingly like that of the first 
Epistle, that either all three are the work of a 
single author, or some later writer of the two 
shorter letters has succeeded marvelously in imi- 
tating the style of his predecessor. The latter 
hypothesis is that to which modern doubters of 
the authenticity of these letters are reduced, and 
it is too forced to be credible. The difficulty con- 
cerning the canonization of these letters would 
seem largely to have been a doubt whether epis- 
tles in which the personal note was so strong were 
sufficiently fitted for general edification to en- 
title them to public reading in the churches. For 
we must bear in mind throughout this inquiry into 
the history of the Canon, that in the patristic 

1 Jerome writes, in his book on the " Lives of Illustrious Men," 
of this Epistle: "James . . . wrote a single Epistle, which is 
reckoned among the seven catholic Epistles, and even this is claimed 
by some to have been published by some one else under his name, 
and gradually, as time went on, to have gained authority " (chap. 2). 
But Jerome is very conscientious in mentioning all doubts and ques- 
tionings, even those that he does not share. He makes the canon- 
icity of James in his day unmistakable. 



THE DISPUTED BOOKS I93 

literature " Scripture " means not merely writ- 
ings composed by apostles and believed therefore 
to be inspired, but writings fitted to edify the 
church. This principle will explain both the 
ignoring of these Epistles by the early Fathers, 
and the wavering and uncertain attitude of the 
churches toward them after the letters had be- 
come widely known. 

The earliest reference to them in the literature 
is probably that of Clement of Alexandria, who 
speaks of the " longer Epistle " 1 of John, thereby 
implying knowledge of at least one that was 
shorter. Moreover, Eusebius assures us that 
Clement summarized all the catholic Epistles in 
his lost " Hypotyposes." 2 Irenaeus accurately 
quotes by name 2 John 7, 8, as from " the afore- 
said Epistle," which, however, was First John. 
Either Irenseus here remembers incorrectly, or, 
as many think, had a MS in which First John 
and Second John were given continuously as one 
Epistle. 3 If this latter hypothesis could be es- 
tablished, it might throw light on the perplex- 
ing words of the Muratorian Fragment, " two 
belonging to the above-named John — or bearing 
the name of John." This has been independ- 

1 Strom. 2 H. E., vi. 14. 1. 3 Adv. Haer., iii. 16. 18. 

N 



194 0UR NEW TESTAMENT 

ently conjectured to mean that First John and 
Second John were reckoned as one, and Third 
John was the second in this enumeration. 

It will be noted that the Muratorian Fragment 
seems to disparage the authenticity of the Johan- 
nine Epistles, and that its doubt applies to all of 
them. In this it differs from the general voice 
of the church, which accepted First John practi- 
cally without question. By the time of Eusebius * 
there seems still to have been doubt concerning 
the shorter letters, for he speaks of " those that 
are called the second and third of John, whether 
they belong to the evangelist or to another per- 
son of the same name." 2 Origen had anticipated 
the historian in this view of the case when he said, 
" He has left also an epistle of very few lines ; 
perhaps also a second and third ; but not all con- 
sidered them genuine, and together they do not 
contain a hundred lines." 3 And Dionysius is 
quoted by Eusebius as speaking of " the reputed 
second and third Epistles of John." 4 

These more or less explicit doubts are echoed 

1 H. E., iii. 24. 

2 In the West this doubt lasted at least as late as Jerome's time, 
for he attributes Second and Third John to John the Presbyter (De 
Vir. III. 9). 

8 H. E., vi. 25. * Ibid., vii. 25. iz. 



C( ^ T ^^ TT „„^ )) 



THE DISPUTED BOOKS I95 

by the Latin Fathers. Tertullian ignores the 
Epistle, while Cyprian 1 quotes 2 John 1, 11, 
and for the rest the chief evidence of the West 
is the evidence of silence. This may, however, 
imply that the Epistles were little esteemed by 
comparison with the rest of the New Testament, 
not that their canonicity was denied. Is not that 
practically their position in the church to-day? 
These letters are less valued, because they are 
less valuable, than the longer Epistles, but the 
recognition of differing degrees of value among 
the books of the Canon is not a denial of canon- 
icity. All doubt seems, at any rate, to have van- 
ished by the time of Cyril of Jerusalem, who in- 
cluded them among the " seven catholic Epistles " 
that he commends to catechumens, and Athana- 
sius accepts them as canonical without question, 
as do Jerome and Augustine in the West. 

The Epistle of Jude has as good early attesta- 
tion as most of the New Testament writings. 
Clement of Rome has been thought to imitate 
the doxology, or, as is perhaps more probable, 
both writers use a form of words that was already 
liturgical and common to all the churches. Per- 
haps the strongest attestation, if not the earliest, 

x De Haer. Bapt. 



I96 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

comes from the East. One passage in the Di- 
dache * is too similar to Jude 29 to be an accident, 
and it is hardly satisfactory, as in the case of 
Clement, to have recourse to a theory of a com- 
mon origin. The critics have overworked that 
theory as much as orthodox writers have 
stretched too far their " quotations " from the 
Scriptures in the early Fathers. Polycarp's " be 
built up upon the faith that was delivered to you " 
is almost certainly an echo of Jude 3 : 20; for 
the phrases " built up upon the faith " and " the 
faith once for all delivered to the saints " are pe- 
culiar to Jude, and have ever since been much 
used by all Christian writers. Clement of Alex- 
andria quotes Jude, by name and otherwise, in 
his " Stromata " and his " Hypotyposes." In 
this lost book, of which we have only a few frag- 
ments, Eusebius 2 tells us that he gave summaries 
of all the canonical Scriptures, not omitting the 
doubtful books, such as Jude and other catholic 
Epistles. Theophilus of Antioch, and Athenag- 
oras make references more or less clear to Jude, 
without naming the book. 

In fact, the most serious lack of attestation in 
the East is the absence of Jude from the Peshito 

1 ii. 7. 9 H. E., vi. 14. 1. 



BOOKS 197 

version, and the consequent ignoring of the book 
in all Syriac literature of the early centuries. To 
this should probably be added the fact that Ori- 
gen, as quoted by Eusebius, does not include Jude 
in his list of canonical writings, though he quotes 
freely from the Epistle in his exegetical writings. 
And Eusebius tells us there were doubts in his 
day : " These things are recorded in regard to 
James, who is said to be the author of the first 
of the so-called catholic Epistles. But it is to be 
observed that it is disputed — at least, not many 
of the ancients have mentioned it, as is the case 
likewise with the Epistle that bears the name of 
Jude, which is also one of the seven catholic 
Epistles. Nevertheless, we know that these also, 
with the rest, have been read publicly in very 
many churches." 1 And elsewhere, as we have 
seen, Eusebius classes Jude among the Antilegom- 
ena, or disputed books. 

Some of the great Fathers of the East must 
have at least esteemed the book lightly, for we 
find no quotations from it in the voluminous 
writings of Chrysostom and Theodoret, while 
Theodore of Mopsuestia is said definitely to have 
rejected it. Nevertheless, it is in the East that 

1 ii. 23. 25. 



I98 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

we find the first evidence of final acceptance, and 
that in Alexandria, where the first positive attes- 
tation is found. Didymus included it in his 
Commentary of the catholic Epistles, and the sub- 
sequent approval of Athanasius, in which Cyril 
of Jerusalem concurred, gave the final settle- 
ment to the long-vexed question of the Epistle's 
canonicity. 

In the West the evidence is less clear. Irenaeus 
may refer to this book, for he uses the phrase 
" the faith that has been delivered," and Ter- 
tullian certainly knew and esteemed the book as 
Scripture, for he regards Jude's quoting of Enoch 
to be proof of the authority of the latter — " Enoch 
has apostolic testimony in Jude," he says. 1 Cyp- 
rian ignores the book. While the Muratorian 
Fragment contains it, it is lacking in the list of 
books contained in the Old Latin version given 
by Cassiodorus, and also in the Canon Momm- 
senianus, an African list of the middle of the 
fourth century. 2 It is fully accepted by Jerome 
and Augustine. 

Considering the brevity of the writing, as 

1 Be Cult. Fern., i. 3. 

2 De Inst. Div. Lit., xiv. See Westcott, p. 584- Not all the 
catholic Epistles seem to have been received into the Latin canon 
until the fourth century. For the Canon Mommsenianus, see West- 
cott, p. 572, where it is called the " Cheltenham List." 



THE DISPUTED BOOKS I99 

well as its peculiar character, we must conclude 
that it had a wider acceptance at the beginning of 
the third century than we could have reasonably 
expected. The doubts regarding its canonicity 
that thereafter prevailed until its final acceptance 
in the fifth century, and even found occasional 
utterance after that, were doubtless due to its 
contents. Modern critics object to it largely on 
the ground of its doubtful authenticity, many of 
them holding that it is a pseudonymous writing of 
the second century, probably not earlier than 150. 
But unless the words of Eusebius are to be taken 
as expressing such doubt, no doubt of the aposto- 
licity of Jude is expressed by the Fathers. It 
seems to be the use of the book of Enoch, whose 
canonicity was yet more in doubt, that threw 
doubts on Jude. The angelology borrowed from 
that Jewish Apocalypse lent itself easily to the 
use of Gnostic heretics, and this would inevitably 
cast suspicion upon the book. It was not merely 
the fact that Jude borrowed ideas from Enoch, 
but that he mentioned the book by name, thereby 
giving at least a quasi recognition of its canon- 
icity, that caused the real difficulty. The church 
was more and more settling to the conviction that 
Enoch was not canonical. The problem there- 



200 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

fore was, Could Jude be consistently canonized 
while Enoch was excluded? And the difficulty 
was sufficiently grave to delay complete recogni- 
tion of Jude for more than a century. 

The second Epistle of Peter was the New Tes- 
tament writing that (next to the Apocalypse) 
was longest doubted, was latest admitted to the 
Canon, and has been most frequently questioned 
since. Harnack thinks it the one clearly pseu- 
donymous writing of the New Testament. 
Doubtless this treatment of the Epistle was due 
in part to the lack of so clear attestation from 
the early Christian writers as the other books 
had. For, while some orthodox historians of 
the Canon stoutly maintain that it is quoted by 
Clement of Rome, Ignatius, Barnabas, Justin, 
Irenseus, and the Shepherd, it cannot be said that 
a good case is made out. The one sentence that 
most frequently appears in the Fathers named — 
" a thousand years are one day " — may quite as 
well be a reminiscence of Ps. 90 : 4 as of 2 
Peter 3 : 8 (it is an exact quotation of neither), 
and no Father before Methodius (305) quotes 
it as Peter's. 

Beyond this lack of early attestation, the 
literary character of the book, and its evident 



THE DISPUTED BOOKS 201 

literary relations to two other books that were 
candidates for a place in the Canon, constituted a 
serious difficulty. The substantial identity of 
Jude 3 to 16 and 2 Peter 2 : 1-19 * can be ac- 
counted for only on one of two theories: one 
writer borrowed from the other, or else both bor- 
rowed from a common original. The former 
hypothesis is the simpler, and hence to be 
preferred; but in that case, which is the prior 
document? This is a literary problem that can- 
not be said to be solved as yet, since the foremost 
critics of our day disagree in their conclusions. 
The direct, simple style of Jude makes it probable 
that this is the older writing, and more than this 
cannot be said. 

But there is another book that has unsolved re- 
lations with Second Peter, the Apocalypse of 
Peter. While they have no long passage in com- 
mon, there are many sentences and phrases that one 
must have borrowed from the other, or both from 
a common source — unless, indeed, the books are 
the work of a single author, as a few critics hold. 
Which of these is the prior work ? Harnack says 
that Second Peter borrows from the Apocalypse 
of Peter, while Julicher seems to think that just 

1 Compare also Jude 17, 18 and 2 Peter 3 : 3. 



202 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

the reverse is the fact. 1 This difference between 
two of the most famous critics is symptomatic, 
and confirms what is said above — the literary 
problem remains unsolved — very likely is insolu- 
ble. The Fathers appreciated this twin problem, 
and because they could not solve it, and the ex- 
ternal evidence in favor of Second Peter was 
weak, the doubts concerning its canonicity were 
obstinate and long enduring. 

Our first positive evidence in favor of the 
canonicity of the book is the fact that Clement of 
Alexandria included it in the summaries of his 
" Hypotyposes." The next Father who makes 
reference to the Epistle is Origen, and he is not 
very consoling to one who is looking for evidence 
of its acceptance, for he says : " And Peter on 
whom the church of Christ is built, ' against 
which the gates of hades shall not prevail,' has 
left one acknowledged Epistle; perhaps also a 
second, but this is doubtful." 2 Nevertheless, the 
same thing is true of this statement that we have 
found in previous cases — this Father nullifies his 
expressed doubt by frequently quoting the book 
in his commentaries and homilies, as we learn 

1 For Harnack's view, see his Chronologie, I.: 471; for Julicher's, 
see his " Introduction," p. 239. 
2 H. E., vi. 25. 8. 



203 

from the fragments of them preserved in Migne's 
Patrology. 

So late as Eusebius, 1 at least, these doubts re- 
mained in the East. " One Epistle of Peter," he 
says, " that called the first, is acknowledged as 
genuine. And this the ancient elders used freely 
in their own writings as an undisputed work. 
But we have learned that his second extant 
Epistle does not belong to the Canon; yet, as it 
has appeared profitable to many, it has been used 
with the other Scriptures." And again, 2 " Among 
the disputed writings, which are nevertheless 
recognized by many, are . . . also the second 
Epistle of Peter." But with Eusebius the turn- 
ing-point is reached in the Greek Church. Didy- 
mus and Athanasius accept the Epistle fully, and 
this voice of Alexandria is echoed by Cyril of 
Jerusalem, Gregory of Nazianzen, and the Greek 
Fathers generally. 

The African Church seems to have led in the 
West in acceptance of this Epistle. At least, 
that seems a valid inference from the use made 
of it in the well-known letter of Firmilian to 
Cyprian regarding the error of Stephen. He de- 
nounces the latter as " even herein defaming 

1 H. E., iii. i. 2 Ibid., iii. 25. 3. 



204 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

Peter and Paul, the blessed apostles, as if the 
very men delivered this who in their epistles exe- 
crated heretics and warned us to avoid them." x 
The reference must be to Second Peter, because 
the first Epistle contains nothing of that sort. 
For the Latin Church Jerome 2 speaks the final 
word : " Therefore the two Epistles that are as- 
cribed to Peter differ in style and character and 
in the structure of words. From which we per- 
ceive that he was compelled to make use of dif- 
ferent interpreters." Jerome's idea is, of course, 
that the apostle could not write Greek, and as two 
men translated his ideas from Aramaic into 
Greek, we have a sufficient explanation of the 
differences in style between the two Epistles. 3 
This was an ingenious attempt to explain away 
those differences of style which no previous 
Father mentions, but of which so much has been 
made by modern critics. In any case, we know 
that the words " ascribed to Peter " in the above 
quotation do not indicate the least doubt on the 
part of Jerome as to the canonicity of the book. 
As in the case of Hebrews, he would regard the 

Cyprian, Ep. 74. (Ox. 75.) 2 Ep. cxx. 

3 Again, in his "Lives of Illustrious Men," Jerome says: " ITc 
wrote two Epistles that are called catholic, the second of which, on 
account of its difference from the first in style, is considered by 
many not to be by him " (chap. 1). 



THE DISPUTED BOOKS 205 

question of canonicity as quite separate from that 
of authenticity, and as to the latter he was indif- 
ferent if he were only assured of apostolicity. 

As we sum up the results of our investigation 
into these Antilegomena, we find how clear and 
unmistakable is the evidence of the decisive in- 
fluence of Alexandria in the settlement of the 
Canon. We have seen before that we owe to 
Alexandrine theologians the retention of He- 
brews. We now find that the same thing is true 
regarding the disputed catholic Epistles. The 
example of Clement was powerful, if not decisive, 
in fixing the number to be recognized as seven, 
and the adhesion of Didymus and Athanasius to 
this view proved decisive. Whatever hesitation 
there had been in the West, when Jerome and 
Augustine followed the lead of Athanasius, it 
quickly disappeared. The approval of these three 
Fathers virtually settled the question of the Canon. 
They unanimously approved the twenty-seven 
books of our New Testament, and no more. With 
their approval the Canon is virtually " closed." 



VII 



THE REJECTED BOOKS 



VII 



THAT is an unusually judicious and dis- 
criminating remark of Harnack's at the 
close of his criticism of Zahn's work on the 
Canon : " The New Testament is not the product 
of a collection, but a reduction of the whole early 
Christian literature, including the Jewish Apoca- 
lypses." * The history of the formation of the 
Canon is a wonderful process of winnowing and 
selection. The books that compose our New 
Testament were not hastily put together, but 
gradually, out of a great mass of competitors, the 
Christian churches came to a complete unanimity 
in the choice of those to be reckoned as canoni- 
cal. If there is in all the history of literature a 
case of the survival of the fittest, the New Testa- 
ment Canon is such a case. 

To the account given by Eusebius of the canoni- 
cal books of his time, which he divides into the 
accepted and the disputed, he adds a further list 
of books that were not canonical. Of these, he 
names Clement, the Didache, Barnabas, the 

1 Das Neue Testament um das Jahre 200, p. 111. 

o 209 



2IO OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

Shepherd, the Acts of Paul, the Acts of Peter, 
Gospel of Peter, the Preaching of Peter, and the 
Apocalypse of Peter. Elsewhere he names the 
Gospel of Thomas, Gospel of Mathias, Gospel 
according to the Hebrews, and the Acts of An- 
drew and John and the other apostles. Books 
like these he places in a class below the Antile- 
gomena, which he calls " among the spurious " (iv 
ro?c vodott;, or literally, " bastards " or " counter- 
feits "). It will be seen that these books corre- 
spond to the four types of literature in the Canon : 
Gospels, Acts, Epistles, and Apocalypse, and it 
will be convenient to consider them in groups fol- 
lowing that order. 

Of the great mass of uncanonical " Gospels " 
that had appeared by the middle of the second cen- 
tury, not more than three can be said ever to have 
had the slightest chance of acceptance. Such docu- 
ments as the Protevangelion, attributed to James 
the Less, the Gospel of the Infancy, and the Gos- 
pel of Nicodemus, had their spurious character 
so stamped upon them, they abounded in such 
puerilities and blasphemies, that no Father ever 
quotes one of them as authority, or testifies to 
their having been read in the churches anywhere. 
Neither orthodox nor heretic would receive them. 



THE REJECTED BOOKS 211 

Their own weight was enough to sink them into 
oblivion, and in the Christian world to-day only 
a few curious scholars know of their existence. 

With three other " Gospels," however, the case 
was different. The Gospel of Peter is frequently 
referred to by the Fathers in a way indicating 
that its claims to canonicity were at least con- 
sidered, though uniformly rejected. The earliest 
reference to it is by Serapion, bishop of Antioch, 

about i qo. Eusebius tells us that 

2L 3D. 190 
Serapion wrote a treatise on the 

" so-called Gospel of Peter," in order " to refute 

the falsehoods which that Gospel contained," and 

the historian quotes the following passage: 

For we, brethren, received both Peter and the other 
apostles as Christ; but we reject intelligently the 
writings falsely ascribed to them, knowing that such 
were not handed down to us. When I visited you I 
supposed that all of you held the true faith, and as I 
had not read the Gospel which they put forward under 
the name of Peter, I said, " If this is the only thing 
that occasions dispute among you, let it be read." 
But now having learned, from what has been told me, 
that their mind was involved in some heresy, I will 
hasten to come to you again. Therefore, brethren, ex- 
pect me shortly. But you will learn, brethren, from 
what has been written to you, that we perceived the 
nature of the heresy of Marcianus, and that not under- 
standing what he was saying, he contradicted himself. 
For having obtained this Gospel from others who had 



212 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

studied it diligently, namely, from the successors of 
those who first used it, whom we call Docetae (for most 
of their opinions are connected with the teaching of 
that school), we have been able to read it through, and 
we find many things in accordance with the true doc- 
trine of the Saviour, but some things added to that 
doctrine, which we have pointed out for you farther on. 1 

Origen, in his Commentary on Matthew, speaks 
of " a tradition in the Gospel of Peter," but this 
very equivocal mention is the sole citation of the 
book in patristic literature. Theodoret speaks of 
this Gospel as having been used by the Nazarenes, 
and a later allusion to it by Jerome seems to be 
based on the testimony of Eusebius 2 rather than 
on personal knowledge. 

This was all that was known until, in 1866, a 
parchment was discovered in Upper Egypt, con- 
taining a fragment of this Gospel, less than six 
thousand words. It gives the account of the 
passion, burial, and resurrection of our Lord, 
in the main as in our canonical Gospels, but with 
many amplifications of detail, most of which are 
unimportant, while some would be at least inter- 
esting, if their truth could be established. For 
example, Joseph of Arimathea is said to have been 
the friend of Pilate and to have begged the body 

J H. E., vi. 12. 3-6. 
*H. E., ii. 2. 



THE REJECTED BOOKS 213 

of Jesus before the crucifixion; one of the male- 
factors spoke from the cross rebuking the multi- 
tude, " We for the evils that we have done have 
suffered thus, but this man, who hath become 
the Saviour of men, what wrong hath he done 
you?" The words of our Lord's last cry are 
given as, " My Power, my Power, thou hast for- 
saken me." The " Eli " or " Eloi " of the canoni- 
cal Gospels might be translated " My Power," 
and that is probably the explanation of this 
variation. The Docetic element of which Sera- 
pion complained is found in the statement that 
when crucified " he held his peace, as though 
having no pain " ; and to the above words of 
the last cry, it is added, " And when he had said 
it he was taken up." The chief deviation from 
the canonical account of the passion is the at- 
tempt to exculpate Pilate and throw the entire 
blame for the death of Jesus on the Jews by 
making Herod the judge who condemned him. 
The account of the resurrection so differs from 
that given by the canonical Gospels as almost to 
deserve to be called totally different, and wher- 
ever it differs it is for the worse. 

From this fragment, brief as it is, we can see 
why the Church, with so complete unanimity, 



214 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

rejected this Gospel. It was evidently a later 
form of the apostolic tradition, deliberately al- 
tered in many particulars for purposes that may 
be easily inferred. After a custom that became 
common in the second century, the name of an 
apostle was attached to it to give it greater cur- 
rency, but so far as we can learn it was always 
and everywhere believed to be pseudonymous. 
We need not feel a single pang of regret that 
the Gospel has perished; the brief fragment that 
has been lately recovered adds nothing to our 
knowledge, is worthless for Christian edification, 
and stimulates little desire for the possession of 
the remainder. Nobody will venture to deny that 
its exclusion from the Canon was wise and com- 
pletely justified by its now proved character. 

Of the Gospel according to the Egyptians, we 
know little except the title, but we may, if we 
please, imagine a great deal. That ancient 
homily, known as Clement's Second Epistle to the 
Corinthians — with which it is now certain that 
Clement had nothing to do — in chapter XII 
gives a number of quotations purporting to be 
the words of our Lord, a number of which 
are not found in any of our four Gospels. 
One of these is also quoted by Clement of Alex- 



THE REJECTED BOOKS 21 5 

andria, with this statement : " We do not 
have this saying in the four Gospels that 
have been handed down to us, but in the one 
according to the Egyptians." * This remark, 
taken with the context, clearly indicates an 
opinion on the part of Clement that this Gospel 
is inferior in authority to the four, since they 
were tradita, " handed down," as this was not. 
This is practically all that we know about this 
Gospel, but the conjectures and theories about it 
have been endless. These have amused the critics 
and done nobody else any harm. One such con- 
jecture has to do with Justin. Inasmuch as many 
of his quotations do not exactly agree with our 
present Gospels, some have guessed that he used 
the Gospel of the Egyptians. There is no harm in 
such guessing — also no profit. 

The Gospel according to the Hebrews has also 
been supposed to be the one from which Justin 
quoted. Of this we know hardly more than of 
the other, for many of the apparent references 
to it in the Fathers may describe an early tradi- 
tion, rather than a written book. Eusebius 2 
quotes Papias as relating " another story of a 
woman, who was accused of many sins before 

1 Strom., iii. 13. 2 H, E„ iii. 39. 16. 



216 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

the Lord, which is contained in the Gospel ac- 
cording to the Hebrews." Some scholars have 
plausibly conjectured that this is the story of 
John 7 : 53 to 8 : n, which practically all 
critics are now agreed was no part of the original 
text of our fourth Gospel, but may by some ac- 
cident in copying or otherwise have been trans- 
ferred from one Gospel to the other. Jerome 
tells us more about this Gospel than any other 
Father. He first became acquainted with it by 
hearsay from the Christians of Syria. He later 
became acquainted with, and even copied and 
translated, a Gospel which he called ipsum He- 
braicum, " the original Hebrew Gospel," and he 
appears to have believed this to be the orginal 
Hebrew of our Matthew, for he says that many 
called it Matthaei authenticum. But it is uncer- 
tain whether this is what he elsewhere calls 
evangelium juxta (or secundum) Hebraeos. 

Two things, however, are clear: whatever 
the relation between this Hebrew Gospel and 
Matthew, it must have differed considerably from 
the canonical Matthew of Jerome's day, or he 
need not have translated it ; and, secondly, it was 
unknown in the West, or he would not have taken 
the trouble to render it into both Greek and Latin. 



THE REJECTED BOOKS 21 J 

Beyond what Jerome tells us, we have only a few 
references to this Gospel. Clement of Alex- 
andria quotes from it : " In the Gospel of the 
Hebrews it is written ' He that wonders shall 
reign, and he that reigns shall rest.' " 1 The 
formula " it is written " always ascribes the char- 
acter of Scripture to a book, and it is evident that 
Clement regarded this Gospel as authoritative, 
if not canonical. Origen, who firmly believed 
there are only four canonical Gospels, quotes it 
twice, but each time with a phrase of disparage- 
ment — " if any one gives credence to the Gospel 
of the Hebrews," " if any one chooses to accept it, 
not in the way of authority, yet for the bringing 
out of the question before us." 2 And Eusebius 
makes very clear the standing of the book in his 
time. He tells us that this is the Gospel " with 
which those of the Hebrews that have accepted 
Christ are especially delighted," to which he adds 
later that the Ebionites used only this Gospel 
" and made small account of the rest." s 

What relation, if any, this Gospel according 
to the Hebrews had to the Gospel that, Papias 
says, Matthew wrote in Hebrew (Aramaic), we 

1 Strom., ii. 9. 2 Commentary on John 2 : 12; Matt. 19 : 16. 

8 H. E., iii. 27. 



2l8 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

need not stop to discuss. When we put together 
our fragmentary knowledge of this writing, we 
find that we know enough about it not to be 
astonished that the Church declined to accept it 
on a par with our four Gospels. The diligence of 
modern scholars has recovered from the ancient 
literature twenty-four brief fragments of this 
Gospel. The most striking saying of our Lord 
preserved is this : " The Holy Spirit, my mother, 
took me just now by one of my hairs, and carried 
me away to the great Mount Tabor." 1 " From 
one, learn all," says the old Latin proverb. We 
may judge from this how well fitted the Gospel 
according to the Hebrews was to instruct and 
edify the Church. He that has tears to shed over 
the loss of this document let him shed them now. 
There is one other work that at one time 
seemed likely to become canonical, which differs 
widely from any of the preceding, namely, the 
Diatessaron of Tatian. Among all the books at 
any time permitted to be read in the churches, this 
alone was avowedly unapostolic in any sense. Its 
origin was well known, its author making no claim 

1 This saying is quoted no fewer than five times by Origen and 
Jerome, and evidently made a deep impression on them — as, indeed, 
it is well fitted to do— but perhaps not quite the impression that it 
makes on us of to-day. 



THE REJECTED BOOKS 210, 

even to have known the apostles. But as it was 
composed of the very words of the four Gospels, 
we can easily see how it might come to be read 
instead of the original Gospels, 
ihe Diatessaron appears to have 
been written in Syriac, 1 and obtained a wide cir- 
culation among the Syrian churches. It is sup- 
posed to have been written while Tatian was still 
orthodox, but his later heresy naturally cast a 
shadow of suspicion backward, and the circum- 
stance that he omitted the genealogies gave rise 
to the suspicion that he removed them because 
they tended to prove that Christ was born of 
David according to the flesh. This caused 
Theodoret, bishop of Cyrrhus, 420-457, to use 
his influence and authority to displace the copies 
from the churches as not only uncanonical but 
heretical, and to reintroduce the four Gospels in 
their stead. There was an obvious justification 
for this action, quite apart from any question of 
lurking heresy in Tatian's book. Whatever value 

1 But Harnack and other scholars argue that the Diatessaron must 
have been in Greek originally, because its title is Greek, the only 
other known writing of Tatian, his " Exhortation to the Greeks " is 
in Greek, and there was not in his time a Syriac version of the 
Gospels from which he could have made his harmony. These 
grounds are not sufficient to warrant the conclusion drawn, and 
the last is especially questionable. 



220 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

a Diatessaron may have for private study — and 
that it has some would seem to be proved by the 
publication and use of several such compilations 
in our own day — who would wish to see one sub- 
stituted for our Gospels in the public worship of 
our churches to-day ? The precise sentiments that 
would lead the vast majority of Christians to 
reply with a prompt and emphatic negative, we 
may believe were felt with equal force by the 
Christians of the fifth century. 

Among the survivals of early Christian litera- 
ture it is true that we find a considerable number 
of " Acts," but none of them ever had a chance 
of becoming canonical. Not even the names of 
the apostles, pseudonymously attached, were able 
to give them currency as Scripture, though they 
were read to some extent as edifying literature. 
The one book among them all that, for a brief 
time and in a circumscribed region, was received 
with some exceptional consideration, the " Acts of 
Paul and Thecla," owed what little fame and re- 
spect it had to the potent name of Paul, rather 

than to the character of the book. 

There is reason to believe that these 
" Acts " are based on an older narrative that 
possessed historical truth, though no scriptural 



THE REJECTED BOOKS 221 

authority. And this is not at all inconsistent with 
what Tertullian says about the document. In 
his pre-Montanistic state that Father did not 
hold that women had a right to teach and baptize, 
but apparently some had cited these " Acts," 
which represented Thecla as doing both. To 
which Tertullian rejoins: 

But if the writings which wrongly go under Paul's 
name, claim Thecla's example as a license for women's 
teaching and baptizing, let them know that, in Asia, 
the presbyter who composed that writing [the Acts of 
Paul and Thecla] as if he was augmenting Paul's fame 
from his own store, after being convicted and confess- 
ing that he had done it from love of Paul, was removed 
from office. 

This is a very illuminating extract in more 
ways than one. It not only shows the general 
catholic estimate of the Acts of Paul and Thecla 
at the close of the second century, but it makes 
clear the attitude of the Church toward writings 
known to be pseudonymous, and the treatment of 
those known to be authors of such writings. 
Here was a man who thought it a virtuous 
deed, or at any rate a venial offense, to compose 
a work in the name of Paul and try to palm it 
off on the Christian world as genuine. The 
earlier document that he used and embellished 



222 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

with silly miracles and sillier speeches, if it had 
any title, was doubtless known as the Acts of 
Thecla. This performance of his makes the 
pseudonymous publication of Second Peter psy- 
chologically possible. It even explains how a 
writer of the second half of the second century 
could pen such words as these : " For we did not 
follow cunningly devised fables when we made 
known to you the power and coming of our Lord 
Jesus Christ, but had been eye-witnesses to his 
majesty. For he received from God the Father 
honor and glory, when such a voice was borne to 
him from the majestic glory, This is my beloved 
Son, in whom I am well pleased; and this voice 
we heard borne from heaven, when we were with 
him in the holy mount" (2 Peter 1 : 16-18). 
We can comprehend even this monstrous false- 
hood, for the writer is speaking in the name of 
Peter, and believes that by these lying words 
he is honoring Peter, who might have spoken 
them in his own person with truth; and so he 
has no more compunction of conscience than a 
novelist feels when he puts in the mouths of his 
puppet characters words that are untrue to fact. 
But if Tertullian enables us to understand better 
the psychological process of the deliberate pro- 



THE REJECTED BOOKS 223 

duction and foisting on the church of such a 
pseudonymous epistle as many critics hold Sec- 
ond Peter to be, he also goes far to make it 
evident that to succeed in such an attempt was 
virtually impossible. Shall we believe that the 
forger of the " Acts " was severely punished, 
while the forger of Second Peter went free and 
even his name has been lost? This passage from 
Tertullian puts a burden upon the hypothesis of 
the pseudonymous origin of Second Peter too 
great to be borne, and it may as well be dismissed 
as historically incredible. The church must have 
known the fact, if the epistle had been pseudony- 
mous, and that it would have repudiated the 
epistle and punished the author cannot be rea- 
sonably doubted. 

Midway between the Acts and Epistles, in its 
literary characteristics, lies the Didache. Clem- 
ent of Alexandria quotes from it as " Scrip- 
ture," though not by name : " Such a one is 
called a thief by the Scripture; at least it says, 
Son, do not become a liar, for lying leads to 
theft." * The first mention of it by name we find 
in Eusebius, who affixes the epithet " so-called " 
to the title and places it among the vbda, or 

1 Strom., i. 20; cf. Did., iii. 5. 



224 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

spurious writings, by this double stigma indi- 
cating its totally uncanonical repute in his day. 
Athanasius mentions 1 it in the same class with 
the Wisdom of Solomon, the Wisdom of Sirach, 
Esther, Judith, Tobit, and the Shepherd as 
" books not canonical, but appointed by the 
Fathers to be read to those that are just coming 
to us and desire to be instructed in the doctrine 
of godliness. ,, A more liberal rule prevailed at 
Alexandria regarding such books than in other 
Eastern cities, as is shown by Cyril's earnest ex- 
hortation to catechumens to read only the strictly 
canonical writings. Rufinus, presbyter of Aquilea 
(d. 410), enumerates 2 among "other books that 
are not canonical, but are called ecclesiastical by 
most," the Shepherd, the Judgment of Peter, and 
the Two Ways, which is an alternative title of 
the Didache. 

The Didache is an interesting early Christian 
document, discovered and published in 1883 by 
Bryennios, metropolitan of Nicomedia. It con- 
sists of two parts, the first six chapters being 
designed for catechetical instruction, and the re- 
mainder consisting chiefly of liturgical and disci- 
plinary rules. The first part was probably the 

1 Appendix V. 2 Appendix XII. 



THE REJECTED BOOKS 225 

original document, and was known as the Two 

Ways. It is largely an echo of the Sermon on 

the Mount. The liturgical directions are of later 

date, but cannot have been added 

B. S>. 100 
much later than ioo, for they show 

an ecclesiastical system like that found in the 
Epistle of Clement of Rome, and much simpler 
than the letters of Ignatius disclose. Except that 
the first part is little more than a chain of quota- 
tions from the apostolic Scriptures, it is difficult 
to understand how any Father should have come 
to quote it as Scripture, as Clement of Alexan- 
dria undoubtedly did, since its quality is so dif- 
ferent from the canonical writings. That differ- 
ence of quality is enough to account for the fact 
that Clement stands quite solitary in his treat- 
ment of the Didache as having the character or 
authority of Scripture. 

From the groups of " Epistles " in the early 
Christian literature, two stand out far above their 
fellows in the estimation of believers. The first 
Epistle of Clement of Rome to the Corinthians, 
as we have seen, was almost certainly written 
during the lifetime of some of the apostles, and 
is probably of earlier date than the Gospel or 
Epistles of John, about contemporary with the 



226 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

Apocalypse. It was generally believed in the 

second century to have been the work of the 

Clement referred to by Paul as a 
B. 2>. 97 

fellow-worker in Rome (Phil. 

4:3), and there is nothing impossible, or even 

improbable, in the tradition. That this letter of 

Clement was for a time so highly esteemed as 

to be regarded as Scripture, and was read publicly 

in the churches, there can be no question. The 

earliest reference to it is by Irenaeus, who says : 

In the time of this Clement, no small dissension 
having occurred among the brethren at Corinth, the 
Church in Rome despatched a most powerful letter to 
the Corinthians, exhorting them to peace, renewing 
their faith, and declaring the tradition that it had 
lately received from the apostles. . . From this docu- 
ment, whoever chooses to do so may learn that he, the 
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, was preached by the 
churches, and may also understand the apostolic tradi- 
tion of the church, since this epistle is of older date 
than these men who are now propagating falsehood, 
and who conjure into existence another god beyond 
the Creator and Maker of all existing things. 1 

Eusebius bears unmistakable testimony to it in 
the following terms: 

In this same epistle, he [Dionysius of Corinth] makes 
mention also of Clement's epistle to the Corinthians, 

1 Adv. Haer., iii. 3. 3. 



TEE REJECTED BOOKS 227 

showing that it had been from the beginning the 
custom to read it in the [Corinthian] church. His 
words are as follows: " To-day we have passed the 
Lord's holy day, in which we have read your epistle. 
From it, whenever we read it, we shall always be 
able to draw advice, as also from the former epistle, 
which was written to us through Clement." * 

In Codex A this epistle is given directly after 
the regular Canon, showing that in the fifth 
century it was regarded, to use the distinction of 
Rufinus, as "ecclesiastical " but not canonical — 
that is, while it might be read in churches, it was 
not recognized as Scripture in the full sense. If 
ever a permanent deutero-canonical collection of 
New Testament books had developed in the 
church, as was the case with the Old Testament, 
this letter of Clement would undoubtedly have 
led the list. 

We have no definite statement for the reasons 
of its exclusion from the Canon. It could not 
have been its lack of apostolicity, for Clement 
was believed to be as much a fellow-worker of 
the apostles as Mark or Luke. 2 It could not have 

1 H. E., iv. 22. ii. 

2 As good a case of " apostolicity," in the limited sense, can be 
made out for First Clement as for Hebrews; and nearly as good for 
the writings of Ignatius and Polycarp. Since none of these became 
canonical (and there was never even an idea of canonicity in the 
case of Ignatius and Polycarp) some other test must have caused 
their rejection. This will be more fully discussed in chap. io. 



228 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

been doubts of its authorship, as in the case of 
Hebrews and Second Peter, for there are no 
recorded doubts. It must have been the growing 
perception by the Church that this epistle, by 
virtue of its own character, did not belong to the 
same class as either the Pauline or catholic Epis- 
tles. And no one who reads the epistle to-day 
is at all likely to dispute the validity of the de- 
cision. Its often fanciful exegesis of the Old 
Testament does not prepossess one in its favor, 
and the writer's childlike belief in the fable of the 
phoenix and other like marvels, is a more serious 
obstacle to our receiving it, though in the early 
centuries it is not likely that this objection was 
strongly felt. Chief of all is the internal evidence 
borne by the epistle that it is a secondary docu- 
ment, not primary and original, an echo of the 
canonical Gospels and Epistles. It is on an en- 
tirely different spiritual plane from these writ- 
ings, and as this difference came to be more 
clearly perceived, its authority declined, in spite 
of the fact that it contains much excellent re- 
ligious instruction. 

The Epistle of Barnabas was probably com- 
posed by an Alexandrian Jew, and was highly 
valued for a time because of its supposed apostolic 



THE REJECTED BOOKS 229 

origin. Clement of Alexandria seems to have 
accepted its authenticity, and to have regarded 
it as Scripture, for he both in- 
eluded it in his Hypotyposes 
and quoted it repeatedly in his " Stromata," 
where he nearly always cites it as the work of 
the " Apostle Barnabas," and in one case says 
that the author was " the Apostle Barnabas, and 
he was one of the seventy, a fellow-worker of 
Paul." Origen calls it a " catholic epistle," and 
by his quotations seems to rank it among the 
sacred Scriptures, yet when he comes to make a 
list of canonical works he omits it. 1 As, however, 
we cannot be quite certain that Eusebius has cor- 
rectly presented Origen's ideas of the Canon, it 
would not be fair to press that omission too far. 

From this time onward its repute seems to have 
rapidly declined. The conviction grew that it 
was not the work of the Apostle Barnabas, and 
Eusebius places it among his list of Notha, or 
" spurious " writings. Athanasius and Jerome do 
not describe it as among those edifying writ- 
ings that are read in church, and so are eccle- 
siastical though not canonical. The epistle itself 
suggests the reason for its rejection. 

1 c. Celsum., i. 63. 



23O OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

The authors of the canonical Epistle to the 
Hebrews and the uncanonical Epistle of Barna- 
bas had the same problem to solve: what was 
the relation of Judaism to Christianity? They 
solve it in directly opposite ways. The author 
of Hebrews shows that the Mosaic system was a 
series of prophetic symbols of the facts and doc- 
trines of Christianity, and having been fulfilled 
they have passed away — they were but a shadow 
of the good things to come, which are now here 
and possessed by Christian believers. The au- 
thor of Barnabas, on the contrary, argues that 
the Judaic system is perpetually valid, but by a 
spiritual and mystical interpretation he reads 
back Christianity into Judaism. His absurd exe- 
gesis — no more absurd, however, than is to be 
found in Origen and many other Fathers of this 
period — his misunderstandings and inaccuracies 
in his treatment of the Old Testament, his con- 
ceited boasting of superior knowledge, are in- 
compatible not merely with the character of Bar- 
nabas, but with any high religious value in the 
writing. It is so much below the letter of Clem- 
ent in religious insight and spiritual tone that 
the wonder is how it ever obtained any recog- 
nition as Scripture. Probably its Alexandrian 



THE REJECTED BOOKS 23 1 

origin is responsible for the respect paid it by 
Alexandrian Fathers, and there is nothing to 
show that the rest of the Church ever shared the 
views of Clement and Origen. 

We come now to those books that may be 
grouped under the general name of " Apoca- 
lypses." Of these several attained at least an 
" ecclesiastical" character. The Muratorian 
Fragment mentions an Apocalypse of Peter, al- 
most if not quite on a par with the canonical 

Apocalypse. Until recently, only 

&♦&♦ 150(1) 
the name was known to us. Clem- 
ent of Alexandria included it in his " Hypoty- 
poses " ; the Catalogus Claromontanas, an East- 
ern list of the third century, includes it, placing 
it at the end of the Canon, but Eusebius rejects it 
emphatically : * "As to that which is called the 
Preaching, and that called the Apocalypse of 
Peter, we know nothing of their being handed 
down as catholic writings, since neither among 
the ancients nor among the ecclesiastical writers 
of our own day, has there been any one that has 
appealed to testimony taken from them." Never- 
theless, the historian Sozomon testifies 2 consider- 
ably later (c. 450) that " the so-called Apocalypse 

1 H. E., iii. 3. 2 H. E., vii. 19. 



2j2 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

of Peter, which was deemed entirely spurious by 
the ancients, we have discovered to be read in cer- 
tain churches of Palestine up to the present day, 
once a year, on the day of preparation, during 
which the people most religiously fast in com- 
memoration of the Saviour's passion." 

The same parchment discovered in 1886, in 
Upper Egypt, that contained a fragment of the 
lost Gospel of Peter, contained also a fragment 
of the apocalypse ascribed to the same author. 
If we compare the stern reticence of John's treat- 
ment of the wicked with the following extract, a 
fair sample of more than half of this fragment, 
we shall understand perfectly the doubts regard- 
ing the book mentioned in the Muratorian Frag- 
ment, as well as the unhesitating final rejection 
of a writing whose affinities are with Dante's " In- 
ferno," rather than with canonical Scripture: 

And over against that place I saw another, squalid, 
and it was the place of punishment; and those who 
were punished there and the punishing angels had their 
raiment dark like the air of the place. And there were 
certain hanging there by the tongue: and these were 
the blasphemers of the way of righteousness; and 
under them lay fire, burning and punishing them. And 
there was a great lake, full of flaming mire, in which 
were men who pervert righteousness, and tormenting 
angels afflicted them. . . And I saw the murderers and 



THE REJECTED BOOKS 233 

those who conspired with them cast into a certain 
strait place, full of evil snakes, and smitten by those 
beasts, and thus turning to and fro in that punishment; 
and worms, as it were clouds of darkness, afflicted them. 
And the souls of the murdered stood and looked upon 
the punishment of those murderers and said: O God, 
thy judgment is just. . . And near those were again 
women and men gnawing their own lips, and being 
punished and receiving a red-hot iron in their eyes: 
and these were they who blasphemed and slandered the 
way of righteousness. 1 

But of all the books of the apocalyptic nature, 
the one that had the widest circulation in the 
church, and came nearest to canonization, was the 
Shepherd, which we already have had occasion 
to mention frequently. No doubt the confusing 
of the Hermas believed to be its author with the 
Hernias mentioned by Paul in his salutations to 
the church at Rome (Rom. 16 : 14) had much 
to do with this, but the character of the book still 
more explains its vogue. The same qualities that 
made the Apocalypse of John so highly esteemed 
in the West in an age of persecution, and that 
gained even for the Apocalypse of 

T>, A ♦•*• A \ »•*>• Xe0 

reter an adventitious and tem- 
porary favor, made the Shepherd an extremely 
popular book in the East, where it was chiefly 
known, read, and admired. 

*ANF, ix : 145, 146. 



234 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

Even in the West, however, it was known and 
highly esteemed by some, for Irenseus quotes * 
it as " Scripture " ; but Irenaeus is a Western 
Father only in the sense that he spent his active 
life in Gaul. In education, feeling, thought, he 
was Eastern; and in this case, it is an Eastern 
judgment that he reflects. Tertullian, who is 
more truly Western, rejects the book contemp- 
tuously, calling it " that Shepherd of Adulterers," 
and elsewhere more formally records his objec- 
tion to it : " But I would yield my ground to you 
if the writing of the Shepherd, which is the only 
one that favors adulterers, had deserved to find 
a place in the divine Canon; if it had not been 
habitually judged by every council of churches 
(even of your own) among apocryphal and false 
[writings]. I, however, imbibe the Scriptures of 
that Shepherd who cannot be broken." But it is 
easy to understand the cause of Tertullian's hos- 
tility: the Shepherd is unmistakably anti-Mon- 
tanistic in teaching, and he could therefore see no 
good in it. Yet the author of the Muratorian 
Canon, who has no such prejudice, says distinctly 
that while the book should be read (he evidently 
means privately), " it can never be publicly used 

1 Adv. Haer., iv. 20. 2. 



THE REJECTED BOOKS 235 

in the church, either among the prophets ... or 
the apostles." x In the second century, therefore, 
the West was decidedly unfavorable to the canon- 
izing of the Shepherd. 

Nevertheless, the book long continued to en- 
joy peculiar favor, especially in the East. In 
Alexandria it seems to have been especially 
valued. Clement quotes it or refers to it, three 
times by the author's name, and several times 
more by title only. Though he does not expressly 
cite it as Scripture, he quotes it in connection with 
Scripture, with no indication of any difference of 
quality or authority. In some cases his language 
cannot be taken to mean less than approval of the 
book as inspired, as where he says, " Divinely, 
therefore, the power which spoke to Hermas by 
revelation, said, ' The visions and revelations are 
for those who are of double mind, who doubt in 
their hearts if these things are so or not.' " 2 

Origen is yet more plain spoken in his ap- 
proval. He does not hesitate to say of the Shep- 
herd, in his commentary on Rom. 16:4: "I 
think that Hermas is the author of the tract which 
is called the Shepherd, a writing that seems to me 
very useful and, as I think, divinely inspired." 

1 Appendix I. z Strom., 29; cf., Shep. Vis., ii. 4. 



236 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

This may be taken as Origen's personal opinion 
that the book was worthy of a place in the Canon, 
but he does not testify that it was actually re- 
ceived as canonical in his time. On the contrary, 
if we may trust the accuracy of Eusebius, when 
Origen comes to make a list of the canonical 
books, he pointedly omits the Shepherd. And in 
his commentary on Matthew, he prefixes this 
cautious statement to a quotation : " If one 
should dare, using a Scripture which is in cir- 
culation in the Church, but not acknowledged by 
all to be divine." This passage from Origen 
seems to be much less known, at any rate it is 
far less frequently quoted, than the other given 
above. 

By the time of Eusebius, the status of the book 
as extra-canonical seems to have become definitely 
fixed, for he puts it among the " spurious " books, 
though in another passage he speaks somewhat 
more favorably of it : " This too has been dis- 
puted by some, and on their account cannot be 
placed among the acknowledged books ; while by 
others it is considered quite indispensable, es- 
pecially to those who need instruction in the 
elements of the faith. Hence, as we know, it has 
been publicly read in the churches, and I have 



THE REJECTED BOOKS 2$J 

found that some of the most ancient writers used 
it." * So late as the close of this century, Atha- 
nasius for the East and Rufinus 2 for the West, 
testify that the Shepherd is still considered to be 
an edifying book, and is even read in churches, 
but is not canonical in the full sense. The MSS 
testify that this usage continued for some time. 
The Codex Claromontanus, belonging to the 
seventh century, places the Epistle of Barnabas 
before the Revelation of John, and after the Reve- 
lation gives the Shepherd, Acts of Paul, and 
Revelation of Peter. 

A book that was so long regarded in the Church 
as second only to Scripture, if not itself to be 
received as Scripture, is certainly worthy of re- 
spectful study. Indeed, the formation of the 
Canon may be said to have turned on this book. 
The Shepherd begins with a series of visions, five 
in number. In the first, a woman named Rhoda, 
whose slave Hermas formerly was, appears to 
him and reproaches him for his impure passion 

1 H. E., iii. 5. 

2 Jerome, a contemporary of Rufinus, writes as follows: "Her- 
mas, whom the Apostle Paul mentions in writing to the Romans, 
. . is reputed to be the author of the book which is called Pastor, 
and which is also read publicly in some churches of Greece. It is 
in fact a useful book, and many of the ancient authors quote from 
it as authority, but among the Latins it is almost unknown " (De 
Vir., III. ch. x). 



238 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

for her. She then withdraws into the heavens, 
leaving him overwhelmed with his newly roused 
sense of guilt, when an aged woman appears to 
him, whom he discovers to be the Church. In 
three successive visions, the Church growing and 
spreading, the Church purified by suffering, and 
the terrors of the judgment are shown to him and 
expounded by this aged woman. The fifth vision 
is something more than a vision (Zpaoc$) y it is 
a Revelation (dnoxdAufac) . The " Shepherd, the 
angel of repentance " now appears, and delivers 
to Hermas twelve Mandates and ten Similitudes, 
which he is charged to write down. This is the 
main feature of the book, for which the visions 
are only introductory and preparatory. There is 
much sound Christian doctrine in the writing 
and excellent ethical teaching, but this is inter- 
mingled with so much that is fanciful, even absurd 
and grotesque, that one of our age can only 
wonder how his fellow-Christians could ever have 
found edification in the reading of it. 

The Shepherd has been called the " Pilgrim's 
Progress " of the early Church, but except that 
Bunyan used a framework of fiction, and put his 
religious teaching into similitudes, there is no 
point of contact between them. Indeed, no com- 



THE REJECTED BOOKS 239 

parison of two works in literature could be more 
inept and misleading. Bishop Lightfoot com- 
pared it to Dante's " Divine Comedy," and sug- 
gested that the function of Rhoda is like that of 
Beatrice, but the learned bishop was evidently a 
better scholar than literary critic. Comparisons 
like these do not illuminate, they merely mislead, 
and one who is induced by them to undertake the 
reading of the Shepherd, in the hope of finding in 
it something of the supreme literary gift of Dante 
and Bunyan, will be deeply disappointed. The one 
thing he will be unable to understand is, how any 
Christian of good sense should ever have been will- 
ing to accept this book as Scripture. That it was 
so accepted for several generations by a consider- 
able part of the Church, measures better than any 
other fact the spiritual insight and literary dis- 
cernment of those times. 

As to these rejected books, taken as a class, 
what have we discovered by our inquiry? That 
for a time, longer or shorter in each case, they 
were quoted as Scripture by some Fathers, while 
others as pointedly declined to accept their au- 
thority. That in a region, larger or smaller, they 
were read in the churches along with the canon- 
ical writings, as at least useful and edifying books. 



24O OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

That doubts regarding their canonicity can in 
some cases be traced from their earliest attesta- 
tions, and that such doubts, once started, continue 
to grow until they become convictions. That the 
final rejection of these books was practically 
unanimous — East and West, in spite of their nu- 
merous and growing differences about other 
matters, being in cordial agreement on this ques- 
tion. That, so far as any evidence yet examined 
goes to show, this was the gradually formed, un- 
forced decision of the churches and Fathers, act- 
ing with little or no concert. That this final de- 
cision is amply accounted for and justified by the 
character of the rejected books themselves. The 
hypothesis of rejection by ecclesiastical authority 
is entirely gratuitous and unnecessary, as well as 
unsustained by fact. 



VIII 
THE VOICE OF AUTHORITY 



VIII 

NO reader can have failed to note the recur- 
rence, in the preceding chapters, of the 
phrase " read in the churches." It is not the sole 
appeal, but it is the constant appeal of those Fa- 
thers that discuss the canonicity of any book. 
What is the significance of that phrase? What 
are we fairly entitled to infer from the use of 
those words by the Fathers, down to the middle 
of the fifth century? 

Negatively, we can infer that there had been 
no official decision concerning the canonicity of 
doubtful books. It is true that a passage already 
quoted from Tertullian seems to contradict this 
inference. He says that the Shepherd had " been 
habitually judged by every council of churches 
(even of your own) among apocryphal and false 
[writings]. " But Tertullian is here obviously 
rhetorical, and he specifies no such councils which, 
in any case, must have been mere local synods and 
therefore void of authority beyond their own im- 
mediate jurisdiction. And there is a difference 
also between a synod's deciding that a certain 

243 



244 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

book should not be received as Scripture, and a 
synod's making a general decree on the Canon. 
No evidence remains that, up to Tertullian's day, 
there had been any such decree, and the evidence 
is overwhelming that there had not. Besides, it is 
quite possible that we have not the true original 
reading here in Tertullian's text, which is ad- 
mittedly corrupt and demands frequent emenda- 
tion. His phrase ab omni concilia ecclesiarum 
(by every council of churches) may easily have 
been ab omni consilio, " by the general judgment 
of churches," which is accordant with the facts 
as we know them, while the text that has come 
down to us contradicts every other source of in- 
formation about this period. 

Positively, we may infer that, down to the 
middle of the fifth century, the question of canon- 
icity had been a question for the churches to de- 
cide, and that they had in fact decided it, each 
for itself. Canonicity was a question of usage, 
and each church had its own usage, which it 
settled quite independently, so far as any external 
authority was concerned, but with some decent 
regard for the usages elsewhere prevailing. 
Alexandria had one usage, Antioch another, 
Carthage had traditions of her own, and Rome's 



THE VOICE OF AUTHORITY 245 

were different still. But there was a growing 
tendency toward assimilation and uniformity of 
usage, which by the end of the fourth century had 
settled the question of the Canon, as the simulta- 
neous testimony of Athanasius for the East and 
Jerome and Augustine for the West, fully assures 
us. Only when the churches had thus reached a 
full agreement, on the basis of independent action, 
did councils begin to speak, and what they spoke 
was avowedly nothing but a confirmation of 
usage and doctrine already existing. 

But before we examine these conciliar declara- 
tions, in which the voice of authority spoke, there 
is another interesting question to consider, How 
was the usage of each church settled? Whose 
voice was potent in deciding what books should be 
read, and which should not ? It may as well be ad- 
mitted at the outset that data for the satisfactory 
answering of this question are wanting. We 
have a little evidence, but it is soon exhausted, 
and then we must have recourse to conjecture. 
The very word sends a shiver along the conserva- 
tive spine, but there is conjecture and conjecture. 
Mere haphazard guessing is not only useless, but 
quite certain to be harmful, in all historic in- 
vestigation. On the other hand, conjecture that is 



246 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

the mere prolongation into the unknown of lines 
of evidence clearly drawn, in accordance with 
other known facts and rational principles, almost 
deserves to be called an addition to our solid 
knowledge. 

The danger of this process consists in the con- 
stant temptation that besets the investigator to 
prolong some one line of evidence, to the ex- 
clusion of all others, until this hypothesis so takes 
possession of the mind that evidence to the con- 
trary cannot be appreciated, and is even uncon- 
sciously distorted. A flagrant instance of this 
will presently be given. 

The most influential persons in the early Chris- 
tian communities were the bishops. From the 
time of Ignatius they were considered the center 
of unity and authority. In the settlement of 
questions of this sort their voices would neces- 
sarily be potent, in many cases decisive. When 
they were men of exceptional force of person- 
ality or repute for learning, their advice was 
often sought by other churches. But the bishop 
of the second century was not an autocrat; he 
was president of a council of presbyters, of whom 
he was chief,, not despot. He had to convince the 
presbyters of the wisdom of his decisions before 



THE VOICE OF AUTHORITY 247 

they became the decisions of the church. Igna- 
tius, who so magnifies the episcopate as to en- 
join the churches to which he writes to " do 
nothing without the bishop,' 1 also recognizes the 
importance of the presbyters. " For your justly 
renowned presbytery," he writes to the Ephesians, 
" worthy of God, is fitted as exactly to the bishop 
as the strings are to the harp. Therefore in 
your concord and harmonious love, Jesus Christ 
is sung." * And to the Trallians he writes, " It is 
therefore necessary that, as indeed ye do, so 
without the bishop ye should do nothing, but 
should also be subject to the presbytery, as to the 
apostle of Jesus Christ." And again, 2 " He who 
does anything apart from the bishop, and presby- 
tery, and deacons, such a man is not pure in his 
conscience." 

And if it be objected that the formation of the 
Canon was long subsequent to Ignatius, when the 
episcopate had greatly enlarged its functions and 
power, it may be replied that this idea of the re- 
lations of presbyters and bishops did not cease 
in the Church for several centuries. We find 
Irenaeus exhorting in precisely the same strain, 
" Wherefore it is incumbent to obey the presby- 

iChap. IV. 2 Chap. II, 



248 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

ters who are in the Church." " For these also " 
he says * again of the presbyters, " preserve this 
faith of ours in the one God . . . and they ex- 
pound the Scriptures to us without danger, 
neither blaspheming God, nor dishonoring the 
patriarchs, nor despising the prophets." And 
to insure his orthodoxy, as we have seen before, 
every believer is exhorted to read the Scriptures 
" diligently in company with those who are pres- 
byters in the Church." Irenseus uniformly and 
consistently makes the presbyters, not the bishop, 
prominent in this public reading and exposition 
of the Scriptures, the authority to which the lay- 
man may confidently turn for guidance. The ad- 
ministrative function was long a more important 
feature of the episcopate than the teaching func- 
tion, and the bishops were better financiers and 
organizers than they were preachers. And so 
late as Cyprian's day, at least, presbyters retained 
so much independence that they sometimes vio- 
lated the Ignatian injunction, " do nothing with- 
out the bishop "; for we find Cyprian writing a 
rather indignant letter to the presbyters and dea- 
cons who, without the bishop's concurrence, had 
" claimed to themselves entire authority " and 

1 Adv. Haer., iv. 26. 2. 



THE VOICE OF AUTHORITY 249 

admitted some of the " lapsed " to communion 
with the Church. 1 

In the second century, and even later, the lay- 
men were a force that had to be reckoned with. 
Among the famous Christian writers during the 
formative period of the Canon, included in all 
editions of the Fathers, were Aristides and 
Justin and Athenagoras and Lactantius — all 
laymen. As for the actual influence of presby- 
ters, even so late as the fifth century, let such 
names as Tatian, Clement of Alexandria, Ter- 
tullian, Origen, Jerome, Rufinus, speak. Gen- 
erally, however, Father means bishop, because 
the learning and ability that would qualify one 
to write books of lasting value usually marked 
a man out for election to the episcopate. But it 
is qualities of mind and heart that rank men 
among the Fathers of the church, not possession 
of official rank. 

Now since the bulk of patristic writings is of 
episcopal origin, we may fairly expect to find 
such writers magnifying their office, at least as 

1 Cyprian, Ep. ix. It might be thought to be pressing the matter 
hard to quote here again the evidence previously cited, of presby- 
terial activity in the circulation of early Christian literature, from 
the Shepherd, Vis., ii. 4. Even if this is a fiction, as far as the 
reference to Clement is concerned, Grapte was evidently a presbyter, 
and was enjoined to read the book to the Roman Christians. 



250 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

much as hard facts would allow. What specific 
instances do we find, then, in the matter of di- 
rect episcopal interference with the churches in 
this question of canonicity? No more than two, 
and these of more than doubtful relevance. They 
have been already mentioned, but here demand 
more thorough examination. The first is the 
case of Serapion, bishop of Anti- 
och about 190. There was a dis- 
pute in the parish of Rhossus, in Syria, regarding 
the reading of the Gospel of Peter. When their 
bishop visited them, they asked him about it, and 
he, not having read the book, said, " If this is 
the only thing that occasions dispute among you, 
let it be read." But later, having read the book 
carefully and found that it contained Docetic 
heresy, he says, " I will hasten to come to you 
again. Therefore, brethren, expect me shortly." 
So much we learn from Eusebius, but we do not 
learn from him or from any other source how the 
matter was adjusted. The bishop's decision in 
the first instance seems rather a matter of advice 
than of judicial authority, and on his second visit 
he would reverse his advice and do what he could 
to have the book excluded from public reading. 
Very likely he was successful, but that we do not 



THE VOICE OF AUTHORITY 25 1 

know, still less do we know that he succeeded by 

the exercise of episcopal authority. A bishop in 

the year 190 was not the bishop of the year 490. 

The other case of episcopal interference is that 

of Theodoret, bishop of Cyrrhus, 

o , tt- , • 2U 5>» 450 

in Syria, about 450. His story, in 

his own words, is herewith reproduced in full : 

Tatian also composed the Gospel called Diatessaron, 
removing the genealogies, and all the other passages 
which show that Christ was born of David according 
to the flesh. This was used, not only by the members 
of his party, but even by those who followed the apos- 
tolic doctrine, as they did not perceive the evil design 
of the composition, but used the book in their simplicity 
for its conciseness. And I found also myself more 
than two hundred such books in our churches, which 
had been received with respect; and having gathered 
all together, I caused them to be laid aside, and in- 
troduced in their place the Gospels of the four evan- 
gelists. * 

The language is significant — " caused them to 
be laid aside." No doubt he did just that, but 

1 This case of Theodoret and the Diatessaron is the only instance 
on record of the destruction of Christian literature — if, as some 
think, these copies were destroyed (Theodoret himself only says 
" laid aside "). When other books perished, so far as we know, they 
did so by a natural process. They disappeared because they were 
little valued. Could the Gospel according to the Egyptians, for 
example, ever have perished if it had been esteemed like the canon- 
ical four — or anything within reasonable distance of such esteem? 
The very fact of disappearance is emphatic testimony to the relative 
worthlessness of a book. 



252 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

only after he had convinced the several churches, 
by due instruction, that the Diatessaron ought 
not to be substituted for the four Gospels. Even 
in 450 the power of the bishop, though greatly 
increased, was by no means despotic ; the presby- 
ters could still make themselves heard. And in 
any event, this transaction has no bearing on the 
history of the Canon, for virtual unanimity re- 
garding the canonical books had been reached 
before Theodoret's episcopate began. 

Only one obsessed by a theory that has become 
what the French call an idee fixe, can find in the 
patristic literature that the Canon was settled by 
the apostolical authority of the bishops. And 
even obsession is hardly a valid excuse for abso- 
lute misrepresentation of the patristic evidence. 
Tertullian's somewhat arrogant, " I am the heir 
of the apostles," has called forth this comment: 
" Who is the ' I ' ? Manifestly the organization 
centering in the office of the bishops." * Mani- 
festly it is nothing of the sort. Tertullian is not 
a bishop, and is not at all concerned to uphold 
episcopal authority. He is arguing with heretics 
like Marcion who, he says, have no right to 
cite the Scriptures. To such, any orthodox be- 

1 Ferris, p. 176. 



THE VOICE OF AUTHORITY 253 

liever, like himself, may rejoin, " This is my 
property. . . I am the heir of the apostles." 1 
All the fuss about this " dictatorial I " of Ter- 
tullian is an utter perversion of his language. 

Even worse is the use made of a passage from 
Irenseus. " It was a flat and not an investigation 
that gave to the world the final decision. . . The 
church that issued the fiat had not the strength 
in the second century which it had in the six- 
teenth, or else the question of the Canon might 
have been settled much sooner. But the com- 
mand went forth. ' And therefore it was said to 
Daniel the prophet, Shut up the words and seal 
the book even to the time of consummation, until 
many learn and knowledge be completed.' " 2 A 
reference in the margin to " Irenseus, iv. 26. 1," 
as well as the context, will naturally convey to the 
reader's mind the idea that Irenseus quotes 
these words from Daniel as a command to the 
Church, and that " seal the book " means to 
Irenseus " close the Canon." One cannot believe 
that an impression so utterly at variance with 
fact was intentionally conveyed. For what 
Irenseus does say, as anybody will discover who 
verifies the reference, is this : Christ is con- 

1 De Praescr. Haer., 19. -Ferris, pp. 189, 190. 



254 0UR NEW TESTAMENT 

tained in the Old Testament Scriptures, he is the 
treasure hidden in the field. His nature was 
pointed out by types and parables and could not 
be understood in advance of his manifestation. 
" And therefore it was said to Daniel, Shut up the 
words," etc. What a literary offense it is to apply 
these words to the Canon, whether of the New 
Testament or the Old, needs no further demon- 
stration. 

But worse still, if worse be possible, is the in- 
terpretation that has been put on " a luminous 
passage " of Tertullian, to make his words bear 
out a theory of a Roman origin of the Canon. 
Tertullian has already shown in his treatise 
that Christ first delivered the faith, the apostles 
spread it, and it has descended through apostolic 
churches, to whom alone the Scriptures belong. 
He then addresses the heretics in his rhetorical 
fashion : * 

Come now, you who would indulge a better curiosity, 
if you would apply it to the business of your own sal- 
vation, run over the apostolic churches, in which the 
very thrones of the apostles are still pre-eminent in 
their places, in which their own authentic writings are 
read, uttering the voice and representing the face of 
each of them severally. Achaia is very near you, [in 

1 De Praescr. Haer., 36. 



THE VOICE OF AUTHORITY 255 

which] you find Corinth. Since you are not far from 
Macedonia, you have Philippi, you have the Thessalo- 
nians. Since you are able to cross to Asia, you get 
Ephesus. ((Since, moreover, you are close upon Italy, 
you have Rome, from which there comes into our 
hands the very authority [of apostles themselves]. 
How happy is its church, on which apostles poured 
forth all their doctrine along with their blood! Where 
Peter endures a passion like his Lord's! Where Paul 
wins his crown in a death like John's! Where the Apos- 
tle John was first plunged, unhurt, into boiling oil, and 
thence remitted to his island exile! See what she has 
learned, what taught, what fellowship has had with 
even [our] churches in Africa! One Lord God does 
she acknowledge, the creator of the universe, and Christ 
Jesus [born] of the Virgin Mary, the Son of God, the 
Creator; and the resurrection of the flesh; the law 
and the prophets she unites in one volume with the 
writings of evangelists and apostles, from which she 
drinks in her faith.)) This she seals with the water [of 
baptism], arrays with the Holy Ghost, feeds with the 
Eucharist, cheers with martyrdom, and against such a 
discipline thus maintained she admits no gainsayer. 
This is the discipline which I no longer say foretold 
that heresies should come, but from which they pro- 
ceeded. 

Of this passage only the sentences enclosed in 
double parentheses are quoted by Doctor Ferris, 
or his interpretation could not have been main- 
tained for an instant. Tertullian is speaking of 
Rome, as the context shows, merely as the most 
honored and honorable of the apostolic churches, 
the brightest star in a glorious galaxy. What he 



256 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

says of Rome is obviously true of all the other 
churches. " The law and the prophets she unites 
in one volume with the writings of evangelists 
and apostles, from which she drinks in her faith," 
is no more said of Rome, in any exclusive sense, 
than the possession of the sacraments is ascribed 
exclusively to her in the next sentence. Indeed, 
Tertullian had done his best to prevent any such 
misunderstanding of his meaning, by saying ear- 
lier in his treatise, " Wherever it shall be manifest 
that the true Christian rule and faith shall be, 
there will likewise be the true Scriptures and ex- 
positions thereof and all the Christian traditions." 
But of course Tertullian could not foresee how 
anxiously his works would be searched one day 
for evidence of something that is not there. 

The only sound conclusion from the evidence 
accessible is, therefore, that down to the final 
" closing " of the Canon — which means only, the 
time when it was definitely decided just what 
books should be received as constituting the New 
Testament — no one class and no one locality de- 
cided anything. The clergy as a whole were 
doubtless the chief agency through which a deci- 
sion was reached. However, we can rather be 
certain of this on general principles, because the 



THE VOICE OF AUTHORITY 257 

clergy were the chief agency through which all 
ecclesiastical questions were decided, than assured 
by the aid of any specific and convincing proofs. 
Like the growth of liturgy, of a church calendar, 
or the use of vestments, the Canon must be viewed 
as part of the gradual, orderly, and slow develop- 
ment of ecclesiastical usages that we can trace 
more or less clearly through the first five cen- 
turies. The clergy as a whole, rather than the 
bishops alone, were influential in all these things. 
But because we read little of them, we should 
make a great mistake to assume hastily that the 
laymen, the great silent host of believers, had no 
influence in these matters. By their approval or 
disapproval, sometimes expressed with tumult 
and violence, they played their part in what was 
done. One has only to read the life of Chrysos- 
tom to learn that the laity could make themselves 
felt on occasion, and that a bishop who attempted 
to override their will, even when he was in the 
right, was courting disaster. In the matter of 
the Canon, the Christian believers of all ranks 
were led, not driven — of that we may be quite 
certain. 

When the voice of authority is first heard 
speaking plainly in the Church, it is not an episco- 



258 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

pal voice, but the voice of synods, in which the 
lower clergy also were represented. In spite 
of Tertullian's apparent assertion to the contrary, 
we have no record of a synod that considered the 
question of the Canon, directly or indirectly, be- 
fore the synod of Laodicea, held in 
363. * That this body took some 
action regarding the Canon is certain, but its pre- 
cise decision is unknown to us, as the extant text 
of canon 2 fifty-nine is admitted by most scholars 
to be in part spurious. The canon begins, 3 " Let 
no private psalms 4 be read in the church, nor 
uncanonized books, but only the canonical [books] 
of the New and Old Testament." The list then 

1 Few testimonies regarding these early councils or synods can 
be gleaned from the Fathers. In addition to the one already quoted 
from Tertullian, he says again: "Besides, throughout the provinces 
of Greece there are held in definite localities those councils gathered 
out of the catholic churches, by whose means not only all the 
deeper questions are handled for the common benefit, but the 
actual representation of the whole Christian name is celebrated with 
great veneration." De Jejun., 13. The context shows that these 
synods were for the preservation of orthodoxy, chiefly. Eusebius 
testifies to the same effect: " For the faithful in Asia met often 
in many places throughout Asia to consider this matter, and ex- 
amined the novel utterances and pronounced them profane, and thus 
these persons [Montanists] were expelled from the Church and 
debarred from communication." H. E., v. 16. 10. 

2 Here we have " canon " used in the common ecclesiastical sense 
of a rule enacted by a synod or council, for the guidance of all 
in matters of discipline and administration. 

3 Appendix IV. 

4 Private psalms probably means psalms composed by " private " 
0'. c, uninspired) persons. Later the use of hymns was authorized. 



THE VOICE OF AUTHORITY 259 

follows, first of the Old Testament books, then 
of the New — the latter corresponding to our 
present Canon, with the omission of the Apoca- 
lypse. Both of these catalogues are omitted alto- 
gether in some Greek MSS of the canons, and 
are written in a different hand, often in different 
colored ink, from the canon above quoted. They 
are also omitted in most of the MS versions of 
the canons, as the Latin and Syriac. It is con- 
siderations like these that make scholars pro- 
nounce the lists to be of more than doubtful 
authenticity. 

But, in any case, this is perfectly clear: the 
synod of Laodicea attempted no new legislation. 
The canon adopted recognizes the fact that there 
is already in existence a collection of books, gen- 
erally recognized as fitting to be read in the pub- 
lic worship of the churches, which are known as 
the " canonized " or " canonical " books. If the 
catalogues are genuine, they simply give the 
names of these books, already received as au- 
thoritative in the churches represented in this 
synod. This first word of the voice of authority, 
therefore, is no more than an official recognition 
of what is already a well-established ecclesiastical 
usage. We could not reasonably have expected 



260 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

anything else. The bishops and clergy in council 

will of course say what the bishops and clergy 

have for years been saying in their several 

churches. 

The second time that we hear the voice of 

authority, it comes from Athanasius, the great 

bishop of Alexandria, the fore- 
&. E>* 367 

most theologian and bishop the 

fourth century produced — and that was the 
century also of the two Gregories (of Nazianzen 
and Nyssa) and of Basil and of Chrysostom. 
Athanasius was accustomed to send an encycli- 
cal letter each year shortly before Easter to the 
churches subject to him, as not only bishop but 
also as metropolitan. These became known as 
his Festal Letters, and they contain counsel, com- 
mand, exhortation, regarding the proper celebra- 
tion of Easter. In one of the letters of the 
series, 1 for the year 367, he had occasion to warn 
his people against certain " fabricated " books, 
by which they were liable to be led astray. It 
seems good to him, therefore, he says to them, 
to set before them " the books included in the 
Canon, and handed down and accredited as 
divine." Thereupon follows his catalogue, first 

1 Appendix V. 



THE VOICE OF AUTHORITY 26l 

of the Old Testament, then of the New. The 
latter is the first formal list, from any source, that 
exactly agrees with our New Testament, neither 
admitting any book not found there, nor rejecting 
(or even expressing any doubts concerning) any 
book that is found there. When we are told that 
our New Testament Canon comes to us from 
Rome, and that it would have been a very dif- 
ferent collection if it had proceeded from Alex- 
andria, let us recall to mind that it is this re- 
nowned bishop of Alexandria who gives us the 
first list of the canonical books of the New Testa- 
ment that is identical with those that we possess 
to-day. 

One other voice of authority we hear from the 
fourth century. The third provincial council, or 
synod, of Carthage was held in the year 397. The 
great theologian Augustine was present and took 
part in its deliberations. This synod also adopted 
a canon regarding the Scriptures : 1 "It was also 
determined that besides the canonical Scriptures 
nothing be read in the Church under the title of 
divine Scriptures. The canonical Scriptures are 
these." Then follows the catalogue of both Old 
and New Testaments, the latter precisely agree- 

1 Appendix X. 



262 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

ing with that of Athanasius and our own. It 

will be seen, however, as at Laodicea, there is no 

case here of a dispute as to what the Canon should 

be, followed by an authoritative decision. The 

council tells us plainly that there 
B. 2>» 397 

is an already accepted Canon. But, 

as we have previously learned from numerous 
sources, other books were also read in the 
churches, and this canon is intended to put a stop 
to that practice and confine the public reading 
exclusively to the canonical books. We learn, 
however, from Rufinus, that this object was not 
attained, for even in the next century other 
books were publicly read, though not as equal 
to the canonical books. 1 

This canon of Carthage has not only ecclesiasti- 
cal but historical authority. It is an unimpeach- 
able witness to the fact that the formation of the 
Canon is complete, and that it has been formed 
by the Christian churches. The canon is avowed- 
ly based on the everywhere accepted Christian 
tradition concerning these books, and rests on 
no other sort of authority than universal tradi- 
tion. It has ecclesiastical authority, because, 
although this is in itself the voice of a provincial 

1 Appendix XII. 



THE VOICE OF AUTHORITY 263 

synod only, it was sent to the bishop of Rome for 
his concurrence. " Let this be made known also 
to our brother and fellow-priest Boniface," the 
canon continues, " for the purpose of confirming 
that canon, because we have received from our 
fathers that those books must be read in the 
Church." That such confirmation was given 
there is no reason to doubt, though no record has 
been preserved of it; and by such approval the 
voice of this synod became of nearly as much 
moral weight — throughout the churches of the 
West, at least — as if it were the decision of an 
ecumenical council. 

This remained the doctrine of the Church re- 
garding the Canon down to the Reformation and 
the Council of Trent. Whenever the voice of 
authority spoke again, it was merely to confirm 
what was said at Carthage. No more authorita- 
tive ecclesiastical body uttered its voice before 
the Council of Trent, where for the first time a 
council professing to be ecumenical, and in fact 
representing the entire Catholic Church of the 
West, set forth an official and final decision re- 
garding the Canon. It is necessary, however, to 
take some account of a statement somewhat 
widely diffused, though not in books of real 



264 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

authority, that an earlier ecumenical council did 
define the Canon — namely, the council held in 
Constantinople in 692, and known by various 
titles, the " Trullan," the " Quinsext." It is true 
that this gathering aspired to be the Seventh 
Ecumenical Council, and was accepted as such 
in the East, but in the West its authority was re- 
jected, and the second council of Nice (787) is 
there reckoned as the Seventh Ecumenical. It 
is evident that the canons of such an ecclesiastical 
body cannot be fairly called ecumenical, and that 
they are as devoid of historical authority as of 
moral weight. 

But waiving this point, this council said noth- 
ing explicitly about the Canon of Scripture. Its 
action on that subject is wholly inferential: it 
did, in canon 11 of its acts, ratify the canons 
adopted by a number of provincial synods named, 
including that of Carthage. 1 Whence, it might 
be concluded, this council gave the seal of its ap- 
proval to what that synod enacted about the 
Canon of Scripture. But if the council did this, 
it did a great deal more — a great deal too much, 
indeed — for it also confirmed the Canon of Lao- 
dicea, and this (if genuine) does not agree with 

1 Appendix XVI. 



THE VOICE OF AUTHORITY 265 

the Canon of Carthage. But worse yet, the 

Trullan canon confirms the so-called Apostolic 

Canons, and the " canons " or de- 
ft. D. 692 
cretal letters of Athanasius, Am- 

philochius, and Gregory Theologus (Nazianzen) ; 
and each of these authorities gives a list of 
canonical Scriptures that do not agree with each 
other. Here we have five New Testament Canons 
inferentially confirmed, of which only that of 
Athanasius agrees with the Canon of Carthage. 
The Trullan council, instead of deciding anything 
about the New Testament Canon, only threw the 
whole matter into inextricable confusion. 1 

There are several papal utterances on the sub- 
ject of the Canon that would be of value, as 
tending to settle the question for the West, if 
we could be certain, in the first place, of their 
genuineness, and secondly whether they come 
within the scope of the Vatican definition of in- 
fallibility. The earliest is a letter, 

1*1 «.• u ft'®* 405 

or decretal, purporting to have 

been written by Innocent I about the year 405, 

and gives a list of canonical books corresponding 

1 See documents IV- VIII in the Appendix. The Apostolic Canons 
omit the Apocalypse and add the two letters of Clement; Am- 
philochius is doubtful of more than three catholic Epistles and re- 
jects the Apocalypse; Gregory rejects the Apocalypse. 



266 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

to the Canon of Carthage, with this additional 
admonition: that all other books circulating 
under the names of apostles, are to be not only 
repudiated but condemned. But this is appar- 
ently not instruction from the chair of Peter in 
which the pope speaks as pastor and teacher of 
the whole Church, and consequently it can claim 
no infallible character. Such a decision becomes 
binding in the Roman Catholic Church as a 
matter of discipline, but is not an article of faith. 
And, as has been intimated, scholars regard the 
document as of more than doubtful authenticity. 
Another decretal is attributed to Pope Gela- 
sius and contains the same list. It is supposed 

to have been prepared a little be- 
B. 2>. 496 

fore the year 500, but has suffered 

various alterations, so that it is impossible to say 
precisely what was its original form. In its pres- 
ent state it may be as late as the tenth century. 
It can be taken, therefore, only to represent the 
continuance during the Middle Ages of that 
tradition of the Canon established by the synod of 
Carthage. This decretal is subject to the same 
interpretation, as to its infallible authority, as that 
of Innocent. 

A third papal utterance, of undoubted authen- 



THE VOICE OF AUTHORITY 267 

ticity, is the bull of Eugene IV, addressed in 1441 
to the Council of Florence, in which he defines 
the belief of the holy Roman 
Church with regard to the Scrip- 
tures. This document is open to the same ques- 
tion as to its infallible character, since it is not 
addressed to the whole church. 1 

While, therefore, it may be said with confi- 
dence that the Church of the West continued from 
the fifth century to receive as the Scriptures of 
the New Testament the Canon approved at Car- 
thage, it may be said with equal confidence that 
this continuance was based on ecclesiastical usage 
and not on ecclesiastical authority. The same 
influences that produced the Canon maintained 
it. The whole Church had on trial for three 
centuries the writings that any Christian had 
esteemed to be Scripture, as having claims either 
from supposed apostolic authorship, or by virtue 
of their edificatory value, to be received as of 
divine origin and to be used in the worship of 
God and the instruction of the people. Grad- 
ually, by the process of full proof of all, and the 
cautious acceptance of some and the exclusion 
of others, the entire Church, East and West, was 

1 For the last three documents in full, see Appendix. 



268 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

brought to complete and peaceful unanimity — 
almost the one subject upon which the East and 
West did fully agree in the long history of Chris- 
tianity. That such was the fact was practically 
confessed by the Council of Trent in its action 
in the matter, for, if the question of the Canon 
had been authoritatively decided 
before, there would have been no 
necessity for a decree on that subject. So far 
as the New Testament was concerned, the decree 
of Trent established as an article of faith what 
had then been the usage of the church for a 
thousand years. Henceforth no member of the 
Roman Church could question the canonicity of 
any book of our New Testament without incur- 
ring anathema. 

To prevent any possible misapprehension, it 
should perhaps be added that there was no issue 
between the Reformers and the Catholics regard- 
ing the New Testament Canon. A few scholars 
on either side had shown a disposition to revive 
the early doubts about James and Second Peter 
and the Apocalypse, but not one proposed to drop 
a book from the Canon. There was therefore no 
objection to the Trent decree on the New Testa- 
ment Canon, save the objection that any scholar 



THE VOICE OF AUTHORITY 269 

feels to having questions of historical fact settled 
by the vote of ecclesiastics, whose ignorance in 
too many cases makes their opinion on the issues 
involved absolutely worthless. The erection of 
what ought always to remain an opinion, however 
firmly held, into an article of faith is also objec- 
tionable in itself. 

The issue that Protestantism did raise with the 
Roman Church about the Canon concerned what 
the Protestants have always called the Old Testa- 
ment Apocrypha — books written by Jews, before 
the time of Christ, but never clearly accepted as 
canonical by the Jews, nor in the early church. 
Many of these were quoted by the early Fathers 
as Scripture, and they were included in the Old 
Testament catalogue by the synod of Carthage, 
included in the Vulgate by Jerome, approved by 
Augustine, and had been regarded as Scripture 
for a thousand years before the Reformation be- 
gan. To discuss the reasons why Protestants 
declined to accept these Apocrypha, and why the 
Council of Trent affirmed them to be canonical, 
with an anathema upon all who should reject 
them, is a matter entirely without the scope of 
this inquiry. It is only noticed at all to make 
perfectly clear the nature of the exact issue re- 



2/0 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

garding the Canon in the sixteenth century. 
Since the fifth century, the whole Christian world, 
with practical unanimity, Greek, Roman, and 
Protestant, has accepted the same Canon of the 
New Testament and firmly holds it to-day. 

Most Protestant creeds and Confessions have 
not felt it necessary to insert a precise definition 
of the Canon of the New Testament. Of the 
Confessions appearing before the Westminster, 
only two, composed in the French language — the 
Gallican (1559) and the Belgic (1561) — con- 
tain a list of the canonical books. Though nearly 
all insist upon the supremacy of Scripture, they 
take it for granted that all are agreed as to what 
constitutes Scripture; and, as to the New Testa- 
ment, that assumption was undoubtedly true and 
rendered a catalogue a superfluity. Neverthe- 
less, the Westminster Confession (1647), w ^ tn 
its minute precision of statement, took nothing 
for granted, but gave the usual list of received 
books. Having heard this, we have listened to 
the last word spoken by the voice of authority. 



IX 



THE TESTIMONY OF THE MSS AND 
VERSIONS 



IX 



WE have now to consider a class of evi- 
dence that is valuable for the illustra- 
tion and confirmation that it yields to the 
results already reached in our inquiry. A few 
specially significant facts have already been cited 
from this kind of evidence, but it has seemed 
more likely to produce its full effect, and less 
likely to lead to mental confusion, if examined in 
the mass than if it had been given in detail as 
we proceeded. This is the indirect and unde- 
signed evidence to the history of the Canon given 
by the Greek MSS of the New Testament and 
the early versions made in the various languages 
in use in the Roman empire. 

Constantine, when he was not performing the 
functions of a heathen Pontifex Maximus, de- 
lighted to pose as a Christian emperor. Diocle- 
tian, his predecessor, had covered himself and 
his reign with infamy by persecution of the Chris- 
tians; Constantine showed them every favor. 
Diocletian had endeavored to destroy their sa- 
cred books; Constantine bethought him that a 
s 273 



274 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

present of such books to the churches would be 
a most acceptable gift. Accordingly, about the 
year 331, he wrote to Eusebius the historian, 
requesting that the bishop have prepared for him 
" fifty copies ((rw/idrea) of the Holy Scriptures." 
Then follows an ambiguous clause: &v fidhara 

TTjV T ' £7ttOX£l)/]V XOl TTjV XpTJOtV TW ZTfi ixxfyoiaC, l6"f(f) 

dvayxaiav elvat yqvtoax^ — which may be ren- 
dered, " the preparation and use of which you 
know to be most useful for the instruction of the 
Church," or, " the preparation and use of which 
you know to be most useful in the judgment of 
the Church." The Greek will bear either render- 
ing equally well, and either rendering agrees 
equally with the context, so that it is impossible 
to decide which the emperor meant. If we knew 
that he meant the sense given by the second ren- 
dering, the making of these copies would have a 
most important bearing on the history of the 
Canon. By following such an injunction Euse- 
bius would have done much to fix the Canon, for 
of course the contents of the MSS would be per- 
petuated in copies scattered throughout the East. 
In any case, the making of these fifty copies 
and their presentation to as many different 
churches must have had a great effect; but we 



TESTIMONY OF THE MSS AND VERSIONS 275 

can only guess what sort of effect, since Eusebius 
omits to tell us a word about the contents of 
these MSS, though he adds some other details 
that are more amusing than instructive. The 
emperor authorized the use of two public car- 
riages for the conveyance to him of these MSS, 
which shows that they must have been bulky ; and 
asks Eusebius to send them in care of one of his 
deacons, " who on his arrival here shall experi- 
ence my liberality." The copies were duly made 
and sent to the emperor in " magnificently and 
elaborately bound volumes of a threefold and 
fourfold form." What Eusebius meant by this 
description still puzzles the learned. Some think 
that this describes the parchment leaves, arranged 
according to the custom of the time in quar- 
ternions and ternions, that is, in sets or quires of 
three or four double sheets. Others think that 
this refers to the number of columns of writing 
on a page, some MSS of this period having 
three and others four. If we knew what Euse- 
bius meant here, and what the emperor meant 
by his directions, we should be much aided in 
the solution of several problems that are at 
present insoluble. 

For not a few scholars believe, though they 



276 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

cannot prove, that we have now in our posses- 
sion at least one of these very copies made by 
Eusebius under the direction of Constantine. 
This is the Codex Sinaiticus, the oldest complete 
MS of the New Testament. The story of its 
discovery is one of the most romantic tales of 
modern times and will bear repeating. In 1844 
Constantine Tischendorf, then a privatdocent in 
the University of Leipzig, made a visit to the 
monastery of St. Catherine, at Mount Sinai, 
where he had heard that there was a library con- 
taining some interesting old manuscripts. He 
found one day in a waste-basket forty-three leaves 
of an old MS, and at his earnest request the 
monks gave them to him, instead of lighting fires 
with them as they had intended. They proved 
to contain a portion of the Septuagint version of 
the Old Testament. He made every effort to 
obtain the remainder of the MS, but the monks 
became suspicious and denied that there were 
any more leaves. At a subsequent visit, in 1853, 
he was unsuccessful in his effort to discover more, 
though he firmly believed more to be in existence. 
At a third visit, in 1859, he was more fortunate, 
and discovered the whole of the New Testament, 
as well as the remainder of the Septuagint. 



TESTIMONY OF THE MSS AND VERSIONS 277 

Tischendorf has eloquently described his sur- 
prise and joy when he realized the character 
and great value of his discovery; and he spent 
the whole night in making a copy of the Epistle 
of Barnabas, of which, till then, the Greek origi- 
nal had been unknown. His attempt to make a 
copy of the New Testament portion for publica- 
tion was thwarted by the ignorance and suspi- 
cion of the monks, and nearly eight months were 
consumed in negotiations before they would con- 
sent to part with their treasure. Finally, how- 
ever, it was given to him to be taken to Leipzig 
and published, after which it was to be presented 
to the emperor of Russia in the name of the 
monks. The emperor accepted the " present," 
but, understanding well the Oriental custom of 
gift-making, sent them in return a " present " 
equivalent to six thousand seven hundred and 
fifty dollars of our money. The transaction bears 
a suspicious resemblance to a sale of the MS 
for a good round price; but, though the above 
facts are matters of official record, the monks 
now say that it was stolen from them. The MS 
is one of the chief treasures of the imperial li- 
brary at St. Petersburg, and by the liberality of 
the Russian government a facsimile edition has 



278 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

been published that puts the text at the disposal 
of all Christian scholars. 

This MS is thirteen and one-half inches in 
length by fourteen and seven-eighths inches high, 
and is beautifully written in the uncial hand of 
the fourth century (i. e., in square capital let- 
ters), four columns to a page, of forty-nine lines 
to the column. Besides the entire New Testa- 
ment, it contains the Epistle of 

a. b. 333 a) _ ' A . * , - , 

Barnabas and a large part of the 
Shepherd. Both come after the Canon, and 
though evidently intended to be read in the 
churches, were as evidently considered not to 
be in the same class with the preceding books. 
The order of the canonical books is not only 
curious in itself, but throws an interesting side- 
light on the question of canonicity. First, of 
course, come the four Gospels; next, the Epistles 
of Paul, with Hebrews following Second Thessa- 
lonians; then the Acts, the Catholic Epistles, and 
the Revelation. As the Catholic Epistles and 
Revelation were precisely the last part of the 
Canon to be fully accepted, there was a manifest 
propriety in their being placed last of all. 

We cannot, of course, be certain that this is 
one of the fifty MSS prepared under the direc- 



TESTIMONY OF THE MSS AND VERSIONS 279 

tion of Eusebius, but the characters in which it 
is written prove that it is a MS of the fourth cen- 
tury, and it may well have been one of these very 
copies. One strong confirmation of this view is 
this : there cannot have been made in the fourth 
century a large number of MSS so extensive 
and so costly as this was, aside from the copies 
prepared under the imperial patronage and at 
imperial expense. Being of the fourth century, 
the indirect testimony of the MS is most interest- 
ing and significant. It contains all the books that 
Eusebius catalogues as generally received in his 
day, including those still disputed by a minority, 
the Antilegomena. It also contains two of the 
extra-canonical books that Eusebius names as 
being often read in the churches and believed 
by some to be Scripture, though not fully canoni- 
cal. On the whole, then, the Sinaitic Canon is 
what we should have a right to expect, if it were 
produced under the direction of Eusebius. 

We may still have in existence a second of 
these Eusebian MSS — at least we have a second 
that belongs to this age — the famous Codex Vati- 
canus, which was placed in the great library of 
the Vatican by Pope Nicholas V, in 1448. Noth- 
ing is positively known of the former history of 



280 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

the MS, but several circumstances make it ex- 
tremely probable that it was brought from the 
East to Italy by the learned Greek, Bessarion, 
who bore so large a part in the Italian Renais- 
sance, and became a cardinal of the Roman 
Church. It is a quarto, arranged in quires of five 
double sheets, which does not correspond to either 
form described by Eusebius, if he means to de- 
scribe this form. On the other hand, it has 
three columns usually of forty-two lines each, 
which corresponds to one sort of MS described 
by Eusebius, if his puzzling words describe the 
manner of writing. It is beautifully written on 
elegant vellum, and no ancient MS exceeds it in 
beauty. It was long most jealously guarded from 
the eyes of scholars, even Tischendorf being per- 
mitted in 1843 to examine it no more than three 
hours each of two days. In 1866 he was per- 
mitted somewhat more license, but not enough 
to prepare a critical edition. An official edition, 
published under the nominal authority of Car- 
dinal Mai, in 1857, proved inaccurate and un- 
scholarly in every particular. This was at length 
followed in 1889 by a photographic facsimile, 
which has made this priceless treasure the com- 
mon property of all biblical scholars. 



TESTIMONY OF THE MSS AND VERSIONS 28l 

The Vatican MS undoubtedly contained orig- 
inally the entire Bible in Greek, of which nearly 
all the Old Testament is still preserved (it be- 
gins with Gen. 46 : 28, and lacks Ps. 105-137 
and both Maccabees), but the New 
Testament breaks off abruptly at 
Heb. 9 : 14. The rest of the New Testament has 
been supplied from another MS owned by Cardi- 
nal Bessarion. These facts make the testimony of 
this very ancient MS less decisive for our purpose 
than could be desired. It is, of course, interesting 
to know that the entire seven Catholic Epistles are 
included, following the Acts. As Hebrews follows 
Second Thessalonians in this MS, as in the 
Sinaitic, we may safely conclude that all of the 
other Pauline Epistles were contained in it. What 
we cannot know, and what we would very much 
like to know is, whether the Apocalypse was 
originally a part of it, and also if it had in addi- 
tion any of the " ecclesiastical books " not reck- 
oned as belonging to the Canon ; and, if so, which ? 
We must be content, however, with knowing that, 
so far as its testimony goes, it is exactly that of 
the Codex Sinaiticus, and that in all probability 
the two agreed concerning the entire Canon. 

The Codex Alexandrinus, the greatest single 



282 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

literary treasure of the British Museum, where 

any visitor may see it in the manuscript room, 

has belonged to that institution since 1753. It 

was a gift from the Patriarch of Constantinople 

to Charles I, in 1628, and seems to have been in 

the possession of the Patriarchate since 814, when 

it was brought from Alexandria. 
». B>, 400(7) . ° 

Of its origin nothing is known, 

and there are few grounds for conjecture. The 
character of the writing is somewhat later than 
that of the Sinaitic and Vatican MSS, and fixes 
its probable date at about the beginning of the 
fifth century. It is a quarto, each page contain- 
ing two columns of about fifty lines each, and 
large capital letters are found at the beginning of 
books and sections — a feature that of itself proves 
the date to be later than either of the other great 
uncials, neither of which contain such capital let- 
ters. With the exception of some lost leaves, this 
Codex contains the entire New Testament in 
the same order as that of the Sinaitic and Vati- 
can MSS, and is followed by the two Epistles of 
Clement, the second incomplete. 

This fact, like the similar case of the Codex 
Sinaiticus, affords an opportunity for a difference 
of interpretation, according to the temperament 



TESTIMONY OF THE MSS AND VERSIONS 283 

of the interpreter. By some it will be inferred 
that the placing of these documents in a MS 
evidently intended for liturgical use, indicates an 
intention to recognize the Epistle of Barnabas, 
the Shepherd, and the two letters of Clement as 
having the authority of Scripture. To others it 
will seem equally clear that the careful placing of 
these documents in each case after the books that 
Eusebius tells us were canonical in his day, and 
that were later recognized by Athanasius and 
Cyril, shows that though they might be read in 
the churches as edifying books, they were not 
esteemed Scripture in the full sense. 

One of the most interesting of the ancient MSS 
is the Codex Ephraemi, which is known as a pal- 
impsest, because the original Greek text was par- 
tially scoured off with pumice to make place for 
some writings of St. Ephraem, one of the most 
famous Fathers of the Syrian Church (299-378). 
The Greek text is, however, faintly legible, and is 
believed to belong to the last half of the fifth cen- 
tury. It came to Italy early in the sixteenth cen- 
tury, whence it was brought to France by Cather- 
ine de* Medici, and so was deposited in the Royal 
Library at Paris, where it still remains. Origi- 
nally a copy of the whole Bible, it now contains 



284 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

parts of the Septuagint on sixty-four leaves and 
fragments of the New Testament on one hundred 
and forty-five leaves. Though thus fragmentary, 
it is a MS of great value to the critical student 
of the text, for it was carefully transcribed, and 
its authority perhaps ranks next to that of the 
Vatican MS. But it is equally significant for our 
purpose, for every book of our New Testa- 
ment is represented by at least one leaf, save 
Third John and Second Thessalonians. The 
order of the books is identical with that of the 
other codices. 

The only other great uncial is the Codex Bezae, 
which was presented to the University of Cam- 
bridge, in 1 58 1, by Theodore Beza. All that is 
known of its previous history is that it came from 
the monastery of St. Irenseus, at Lyons, which 
was sacked during the civil war, and probably 
some soldier who had obtained it as plunder gave 
it to Beza. This codex is a quarto, with two col- 
umns of twenty-three lines on a page, one the 

Greek text, the other a Latin trans- 
B. Sh 520 (7) 1 . A . ., , r . 

lation. After the four Gospels — 

which are given in the unique order of Matthew, 

John, Luke, and Mark — is a hiatus of sixty-seven 

leaves, which originally contained the Catholic 



TESTIMONY OF THE MSS AND VERSIONS 285 

Epistles, and probably some other book ; and then 
the Acts. Whether it ever contained anything 
else is uncertain. This MS has long been the 
puzzle of textual critics because of its numerous 
and bold variations from all other authorities, and 
its relation to the question of the Canon is little 
less puzzling. Its date cannot be earlier than the 
fifth century, and it more probably belongs to the 
sixth. 

The testimony of these MSS to the virtual 
settlement of the Canon by the beginning of the 
fifth century is the more convincing because it is 
so wholly undesigned. These splendid and costly 
copies were evidently not made for private use — 
nobody but an emperor or some other great func- 
tionary of high rank and vast wealth could have 
afforded such a possession. No scholar doubts 
that they were made for use in the great Christian 
churches of the empire, and being made for that 
purpose they accurately reflect the estimate of 
the churches regarding the various books that 
had been competing for canonical recognition. 
Reuss well says of the MSS, " they are some- 
times more important and more eloquent than 
the Fathers themselves, ,, but thus far the MSS 
and the Fathers agree wondrous well. 



286 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

Before leaving the subject of manuscript tes- 
timony altogether, there is another item to be 
considered — the evidence offered by the Codex 
Claromontanus. This is a MS of Paul's Epistles, 
in Greek and Latin, now found in the Royal 
Library at Paris, and believed to date from the 

middle of the sixth century. Each 
». S). 550(1) , . , i ti . 4 

page has a single column of twenty- 
one lines, and the text is esteemed one of the most 
ancient and important in existence. It contains 
all the Pauline Epistles (with a hiatus here and 
there in the text), Hebrews being placed after 
Philemon, as in most Western MSS, thus indi- 
cating the lingering objections to this Epistle 
on account of its non-Pauline authorship. 

But the most significant thing in this MS is 
not its text, but a list of the books of the New 
Testament prefixed to the Epistle to the Hebrews, 
with their stichoi, or number of lines. The list 
is a curious one in several respects. It begins 
with the four Gospels in this order: Matthew, 
John, Mark, Luke; then follow the Epistles of 
Paul : Romans, two to the Corinthians, Gala- 
tians, Ephesians, two to Timothy, Titus, Colos- 
sians, Philemon; two to Peter (which can be 
due only to the carelessness of the copyist), 



TESTIMONY OF THE MSS AND VERSIONS 287 

James ; three of John, Jude ; Epistle of Barnabas 
(probably meaning Hebrews) ; Revelation of 
John; Acts of the Apostles. These are all the 
books of the accepted Canon, but there follow, 
with no indication of a difference in character, 
the Shepherd, Acts of Paul, and Revelation of 
Peter. These last are books that Eusebius places 
among the Notha. This is one of the latest testi- 
monies available to show the continued liturgical 
use of some of the same books in the West, after 
the voice of authority had definitely pronounced 
against them. Nothing could more strongly em- 
phasize the principle that it was the usage of the 
churches, and not authority, that decided the 
whole question of canonicity. In other words, 
canonicity was a matter of common law in the 
church, not of statute law. 

The making of versions of the New Testament 
books into several of the languages spoken in 
various parts of the empire doubtless began long 
before we have any positive records of them. 
The native tongue of most of the apostles was 
Aramaic (the "Hebrew" of Acts 21 : 40, and 
the " Hebrew " in which tradition says Matthew 
first wrote his " Logia," or sayings of the Lord). 
This was the language of the greater part of 



288 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

Syria, of which Antioch was the metropolis. 
Though Antioch was in large part a Greek- 
speaking city, Aramaic must have been of equal 
currency among the native population ; and when 
Antioch became the Christian missionary center, 
it could not have been long before Aramaic 
Christians began to multiply. As these Aramaic 
churches grew, the desire for the Gospels and 
the Epistles in their own tongue would grow 
also, and by the year 150 a partial version at 
least was in all probability in circulation. This 
would naturally begin with the translation of 
separate books, which would after a time be col- 
lected, revised, and completed. A Syrian version 
is said to have been quoted as early as 170 by 
Bishop Melito, and though the actual quotation 
is from the book of Genesis, it can hardly be 
doubted that a version of at least some New Tes- 
tament books in Syriac must have preceded any 
Old Testament translations. 

We need not enter into the controversy, that 
has long been hotly waging among the learned, 
regarding the superior antiquity of the two Syriac 
versions, the Peshito and the Curetonian. Those 
who have devoted most attention to the matter are 
the frankest to confess their uncertainty. The 



TESTIMONY OF THE MSS AND VERSIONS 289 

Peshito at any rate seems to belong to the second 

century, and not improbably to the first half of it. 

The oldest MSS of it contain the Provisional 

Canon, with the addition of the Epistles of James 

and Hebrews, but excluding- the 

. 2L 2>. 150 (7) 

remaining four Catholic Epistles 

and the Apocalypse. With this Canon the later 
MSS seem to agree. To this day the Syriac 
New Testament excludes the Apocalypse and four 
of the Catholic Epistles. The Syrian Church be- 
came much divided and so remains. But all have 
the same Canon. " Yet the same translation of 
the Holy Scripture is read alike in the public 
assemblies of the Nestorians among the fastnesses 
of Kurdestan, of the Monophysites who are scat- 
tered over the plains of Syria, of the Christians of 
St. Thomas along the coast of Malabar, and of 
the Maronites on the mountain terraces of Leba- 
non." 1 Indeed, the Syriac churches are the only 
Christian bodies in the world who have never 
accepted the orthodox Canon. 

This is what we should be prepared to find, 
since we have seen the East to be in advance of 
the West in the reception of James and Hebrews, 
and behind in the acceptance of the Apocalypse. 

1 Scrivener, II., 7. 
T 



290 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

But it is important to observe that even the East 
was not entirely homogeneous — the Syrian school 
and the Alexandrine differed materially in their 
estimate of certain New Testament books. The 
conservatism of the Syrian churches in the mat- 
ter of the Canon is shown in this : though there 
were doubtless as many apocryphal books in cir- 
culation there as elsewhere, there is no hint, 
whether in their scriptural MSS or in the wri- 
tings of the Syrian Fathers, that these apocrypha 
were ever confounded with the writings clearly 
canonical. 

There would naturally be a version made in 
Latin at a very early date in the history of Chris- 
tianity. Even if we should admit all that is reck- 
lessly asserted about the predominantly Greek 
character of the Roman Church down to the 
third century, and thereby also admit that the 
making of an early Latin version at Rome was 
most unlikely to happen, these considerations 

would not apply to the African 
». 2>. 150(7) nu - ™ ' 

Church, or to Carthage, its center. 

That a Latin version must be assumed to have 
been produced and circulated there not long after 
150, seems to be a fair inference, if not a neces- 
sary, from the writings of Tertullian. These 



TESTIMONY OF THE MSS AND VERSIONS 2<)I 

begin about 190, and it is the general conclusion 
of patristic scholars that he usually quotes from 
a Latin version, already long enough circulated 
to be in general use and familiar to Christian 
readers. 

But Tertullian was a fair Greek scholar, and 
he seems at times to translate for himself directly 
from the Greek. This makes the task of deciding 
what books of the New Testament were contained 
in this old Latin version a somewhat difficult one. 
Some argue strenuously that it could not have 
contained Hebrews, Second Peter, or James, but 
they rely more on general Western reluctance to 
accept these books than on the actual evidence of 
Tertullian's citations. It is true that he cites 
James only five times, but then he refers to First 
Thessalonians and Titus only eight times each, 
and we may be certain that the old Latin Canon 
contained all the Pauline Epistles. As to He- 
brews, he cites that Epistle forty-two times, at 
least one quotation from nearly every chapter, 
and large portions of chapters 10-13 might be re- 
constructed from his quotations. Nor do the pas- 
sages cited from this book give any peculiar 
evidence of direct translation from the Greek, 
rather than quotation from a received Latin ver- 



292 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

sion. On the whole, it is probable that Tertul- 
lian's Old Latin New Testament contained both 
Hebrews and James, but the evidence for Sec- 
ond Peter, Jude, and Second and Third John is 
less satisfactory. Tertullian indeed refers to all 
these in a way to make probable his acceptance of 
them as canonical, but not so as to prove their 
presence in the old Latin version. 

The evidence of this version is, therefore, 
nearly what we should expect, from other sources, 
to be found at this time in a Western (and es- 
pecially an African) collection of the New Testa- 
ment writings, whether in Greek or Latin. But 
this could not have been the only ancient version 
in Latin. Jerome tells us in his preface to the 
Gospels, that in his day there were " almost as 
many versions as manuscripts," and Augustine is 
even more emphatic : " For the translations of 
the Scripture from Hebrew into Greek can be 
counted, but the Latin translations are out of all 
number. For in the early days of the faith every 
man who happened to get his hands upon a Greek 
manuscript, and who thought he had any knowl- 
edge, were it ever so little, of the two languages, 
ventured upon the work of translation." 1 After- 

x De Doc. Chr., ii. 11. 



TESTIMONY OF THE MSS AND VERSIONS 293 

ward, Augustine indicates clearly his own prefer- 
ence among these numerous translations : " Now, 
among translations themselves, the Itala is to be 
preferred to the others, for it keeps closer to the 
words, while preserving clearness and expres- 
sion." * 

But neither Jerome nor Augustine was a critical 
scholar, according to modern standards, and they 
seem to have mistaken manuscript variations for 
evidence of independent translation. Many 
manuscripts exist that are older than Jerome's 
recension, which became known as the Vulgate, 
and a study of these has convinced textual critics 
that they are all variations of, at most, two 
originals: one the African version already men- 
tioned, the other one that was made somewhat 
later in Rome, or at any rate in Italy, probably the 
one that Augustine calls Itala. Unfortunately, 
however, they survive mostly in fragments, and 
these mainly confined to the Gospels, though one 
contains the Acts and Apocalypse, and others give 
us fragments of Epistles, including First and 
Second Peter, First John, James, and all the 
Pauline Epistles, including Hebrews. The only 
books entirely missing are Jude and Second and 

1 De Doc. Chr., ii. 15. 



294 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

Third John. Even these must have been added 

before Jerome began his recension, but in the 

fourth century they were probably lacking. This 

again agrees well with what we have discovered 

from other sources. 

The Coptic version could have been little later 

than those that we have already considered, and 

was probably in existence at the beginning of the 

third century. This we can fairly infer, not 

only from the extension of Christianity in Upper 

Egypt in the second century, but 
21. 2>, 200(1) 

from what we learn from Athana- 

sius about St. Anthony. In this famous " Life 
of Anthony " 1 we are told that the saint could 
only talk with Greeks through an interpreter (c. 
74), but in his youth he heard the Gospels read in 
church and was deeply impressed by their teach- 
ings (chap. 2, 3). It follows that he must have 
heard the Gospels in his vernacular; and, as he 
was born about 250, this Coptic version must have 
even then been in use for some time in the 
churches of Upper Egypt. 

We do not know which of the several dialects 

1 The authenticity of this writing has been hotly disputed, but 
we need not boggle ovep the acceptance of a book that critics like 
Keim and Hilgenfeld believe at any rate to belong to the age of 
Athanasius, and that Harnack and Moeller receive as trustworthy. 



TESTIMONY OF THE MSS AND VERSIONS 295 

of the Coptic languages Anthony spoke, nor can 
we be certain what relations the existing Coptic 
versions bear to those in use in his day. There 
are remains of at least five different versions, 
with marked dialectic peculiarities; but of three 
there are only insignificant fragments, while two 
we have in a form virtually complete : the Bohairic 
and Sahidic. For our purposes it is unnecessary to 
discuss the yet unsolved problems of their origin 
and relationship; what concerns us is their con- 
tent. As far back as we can trace the history 
of the Bohairic New Testament, it contains all 
the books of our Canon, with the exception of the 
Apocalypse. In many cases this is contained in a 
separate MS, and where it is bound up with the 
other books it is distinguished from them in some 
unmistakable way. Always it is treated as having 
an authority inferior to that of the other books. 
If the version was originally made at the close 
of the second century, this would reflect the 
opinion then entertained at Alexandria of the 
Apocalypse, but after Clement and Origen gave 
their approval to the book the case was otherwise. 
The Sahidic version exists in a number of 
MSS, no one of which gives the whole, and in 
addition to this virtually complete manuscript 



296 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

text certain papyrus fragments have recently been 
discovered that carry the date of this version back 
to the third century, at least, and not improbably 
to the second. Both versions seem to have ar- 
ranged the New Testament writings in the fol- 
lowing order: the four Gospels, the Pauline 
Epistles (with Hebrews between Second Corin- 
thians and Galatians), the Catholic Epistles and 
the Acts. The Sahidic, equally with the Bohairic, 
found no place in the Canon for the Apocalypse, 
and does not seem to have permitted that book 
to be added even as a sort of appendix, for few 
fragments of the Apocalypse have survived. 

The foregoing versions were all made before 
the end of the third century, at the latest date that 
can be possibly assigned to any of them, and they 
reflect the unsettled state of the Canon at the time 
they were made. But we have a number of ver- 
sions belonging to the fifth century when, as we 
have seen, the Fathers and councils combine in 
testimony that the question was virtually settled. 
Do these versions confirm this testimony or do 
they contradict it? 

The first, and most important of these, is the 
revision of the old Latin versions made by Je- 
rome, and thenceforth known as the Vulgate, or 



TESTIMONY OF THE MSS AND VERSIONS 297 

Common version. There were so many variant 
copies in circulation in his day — and the differ- 
ences between them were, as we have seen, 
so extensive as to constitute them in Jerome's 
opinion different versions — that to compare them 
with one another and with the 
original Greek and Hebrew, and 
make an authoritative text, seemed not only to 
Jerome, but to other learned men of the time, a 
work second in importance to none. He com- 
pleted his revision of the New Testament about 
385, and the Old Testament in 405. It will not 
surprise those who remember how the Anglo- 
American Revised version of 1881 was at first re- 
ceived, and how slow has been its progress among 
English-speaking peoples, to hear that Jerome 
was reviled throughout the West for his labors, 
and that it was not until after Gregory the Great 
had given it his formal approval (about 600) that 
his recension came into general use in the Roman 
Church. 

With the vicissitudes of the Vulgate, however, 
we have no immediate concern, interesting 
though it might be to follow its fortunes. What 
especially concerns us is its attitude toward the 
Canon. We know from Jerome's writings that 



298 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

he gave much attention to this subject. In his 
biographical sketches of " Illustrious Men " in 
the history of the church — the first attempt to- 
ward a dictionary of Christian biography — he 
has discussed all the doubtful and disputed books, 
and their real or putative authors. We also learn 
clearly from Jerome's writings that he was anx- 
ious above all things to be orthodox, that he was 
so sensitive to no other charge as to the least im- 
putation of heresy. This lends double authority 
to his decision about the canonical books, for he 
took every possible pains to reflect and establish 
the orthodox view of his day. The New Testa- 
ment part of the Vulgate, which is all that con- 
cerns us now, contained the books of our present 
Canon and no other. Although Jerome, as we 
have seen, recognized certain other books as 
edifying, he did not include any of them in his 
revised version, which ended with the Revelation 
of John. 

There was probably no single influence so po- 
tent in bringing the entire West into uniformity 
with regard to the Canon, as the decision of Je- 
rome and the publication of his version. As this 
gradually came to be truly the Vulgate, the one 
version everywhere received and used, the only 



TESTIMONY OF THE MSS AND VERSIONS 299 

form in which the New Testament was accessible 
in all the countries of Europe during the Middle 
Ages, all previous doubts disappeared, all ques- 
tion regarding canonicity ceased, not to be re- 
vived again until the Reformation. More than 
any bishop, or pope, or council, Jerome is to be 
regarded as the final arbiter of all questions of 
canonicity in the West. From his day, the ques- 
tion is to be regarded as settled. And it was set- 
tled not by any voice of authority, spoken for 
that purpose, but by the extending use of the Vul- 
gate in the public services of the Western Church, 
and by consequence its equal acceptance for pri- 
vate study and for quotation in all theological 
writings. Usage, not authority ; custom, not law, 
from the beginning of the process to the end, 
guided the formation of the Canon. 

A version of the Scriptures was made in Ar- 
menian in the fifth century, or possibly in the 
latter part of the fourth. The surviving copies 
have doubtless undergone considerable variations 
of text, in common with all other ancient wri- 
tings, but there is no reason to 

21. 5>. 400(1) 
suppose that any additions have 

been made to the contents. We have every reason 
to believe that the original version contained what 



300 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

is found in all existing copies, namely, all the 
canonical New Testament books. The only book 
that we should expect to be lacking, in any case, 
is the Apocalypse, and scholars are of the opinion 
that in the extant MSS we have two independ- 
ent translations of this book. What bearing, if 
any, this fact has on the canonicity of the Apoc- 
alypse is a problem that up to the present has not 
been worked out. 

An Ethiopic version that has survived in a 
number of fragmentary MSS, which together 
contain a complete version of the New Testament, 
is assigned by scholars to the end of the fifth or 
the beginning of the sixth century, by which time 
Christianity had become the prevailing religion 
of Abyssinia. The Gospels ordinarily form a vol- 
ume by themselves in the existing MSS of this 
version, while the Epistles of Paul made a second, 
and the Catholic Epistles, Acts, and the Apoc- 
alypse, a third. This grouping bears witness to 
a hypothesis that we have found occasionally sug- 
gested throughout our inquiry : that our Canon 
is the result of putting together several smaller 
collections that had been independently made, and 
at different times. It cannot be said, however, 
that all the evidence that we have discovered, 



TESTIMONY OF THE MSS AND VERSIONS 3OI 

taken together, warrants the assertion of this 
theory as a probable fact. 

Of the Gothic version of Ulfilas it is impossible 
to speak definitely, since so little is positively 
known of it. The chief MS, the Codex Ar- 
genteus, which after many mutations of fortune 
found a resting-place in the library of the Univer- 
sity of Upsala, Sweden, contains only the four 
Gospels, and even these incomplete. The other 
most extensive MS, in the Ambrosian Library at 
Milan, supplies parts of Paul's 
Epistles and some Old Testament 
fragments. A few scattered verses have been 
gleaned from other sources, but thus far no por- 
tion of the Acts, Hebrews, Catholic Epistles, or 
Apocalypse. We cannot doubt that the greater 
part of these, if not all, were found in the com- 
plete version. Indeed, Philostorgius, one of the 
Greek historians, informs us that Ulfilas trans- 
lated all the books of both the Old and New Testa- 
ments, with the exception of the books of Kings, 
which he thought too full of wars to be whole- 
some reading for so warlike a people as the Goths. 
But just how much value is to be attached to this, 
or any other unsupported statement by Philostor- 
gius, is a matter of great dubiety. 



302 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

The manuscripts and versions as a whole agree 
entirely in their testimony with the other docu- 
ments. And together, these original sources make 
the history of the formation of the Canon as clear 
as noonday. 



X 



THE TESTS OF CANONICITY 



X 



CANONICITY was the result of usage pri- 
marily and chiefly — of this our investiga- 
tion has given us full and convincing proofs. But 
for us to see that this is the historic fact, and for 
those who made the history to be conscious of 
what they were doing, are two very different 
things. How far was the process that we have 
been tracing a matter of conscious knowledge to 
the Fathers themselves? How did the matter of 
canonicity present itself to their minds? What 
did they regard as adequate tests of the canonicity 
of any given book? It is conceded that the an- 
swers to these questions cannot alter the historic 
facts, but they may strikingly illuminate the facts. 
I. In the numerous quotations made in the 
previous chapters from the patristic literature, 
one feature has surely been of sufficient promi- 
nence to arrest the attention of every reader, even 
if his attention had not been more than once called 
to it: the emphasis laid by so many of the 
Fathers on the fact that certain books were (or 
were not) " read in the churches." That phrase 
u 305 






306 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

has been one of too frequent recurrence for its 
significance to be missed. From the first mention 
by Justin of the reading of the " Memoirs " of 
the apostles in the public Christian assemblies of 
his day, to the dying-away of all controversy 
about the Canon in the fifth century, we find 
that phrase " read in the churches," or some 
equivalent, continually used. 

Not only so, but, beginning with Irenaeus, we 
find the reading in the churches of a given book, 
or the reverse, constantly adduced as a valid 
reason for regarding a book as canonical. That 
Father, it will be remembered, exhorts those who 
wish to know the truth to " read the Scriptures 
diligently in company with the presbyters in the 
church, with whom is the apostolic doctrine." 
The books read as Scripture in the Catholic 
churches, and only those, are safe guides for him 
who would live as a Christian — that is the con- 
viction of Irenaeus, and we may take it that this 
had become a general conviction toward the close 
of the second century. The Muratorian canon, 
though it recognizes other tests of canonicity, 
which we shall presently consider, also lays great 
stress on this reading in the churches as at any 
rate the decisive practical proof that a book is 



THE TESTS OF CANONICITY 307 

canonical. This conclusion is confirmed by the 
language of Tertullian, who urges in favor of 
the Epistle to the Hebrews, which he attributes to 
Barnabas, that it is " more received in the 
churches than that apocryphal Shepherd of 
adulterers " ; and the latter book, he also tells us, 
has been everywhere rejected by the churches. 
To him this is evidently a decisive reason for ac- 
cepting or rejecting a book, though he makes it 
clear elsewhere that he did not consider it the 
sole reason. 

The testimony of Eusebius shows conclusively 
what was the feeling of his time in the matter. 
He especially mentions that the Shepherd " has 
been publicly read in the churches," but makes it 
clear in the context that this means merely some 
churches. It is precisely because it was not uni- 
versally read in churches that he declined to place 
it among the acknowledged books (Homologou- 
mena), or even among the Antilegomena, that 
were semi-canonical in his day, but distinctly 
among the Notha, or " spurious " books. The 
apparent inconsistencies between the two chief 
passages in which Eusebius discusses the matter 
of the Canon disappear as soon as we get his 
point of view. Among the books not fully canon- 



308 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

ical in his day, i. e., universally received and read 
in all the churches, were some that were received 
and read by the majority, though still rejected by 
" some " ; these he called the Antilegomena. 
There were others that, though accepted and read 
by " some," were not accepted and read by the 
majority; these were called Notha, spurious. 1 
His classification and nomenclature were abso- 
lutely determined by the fact of liturgical use, 
though his personal opinion regarding individual 
books was greatly affected by what he calls the 
usage of the ancient or ecclesiastical writers, 
which we shall consider in another connection. 

The Festal Letter of Athanasius, 2 which he 
wrote in 367, has been frequently cited during our 
investigation. When we consider that this is a 
letter addressed to the clergy, it is evident that the 
whole question was to his mind one of public 
reading of books as Scripture in the churches — 
Athanasius makes no objection to private reading 
of other books ; indeed, he expressly adds that it is 
permitted — and that to his mind the one conclu- 

1 He even recognizes two classes, or grades, among the Notha: 
books read in some churches or quoted by the ancients, or both, 
yet nevertheless not canonical, but what Rufinus calls " ecclesiasti- 
cal "; and books neither read in churches nor cited by Fathers, 
though some bore the names of apostles. 

2 Appendix V. 



THE TESTS OF CANONICITY 309 

sive test of canonicity was usage of the churches. 

Such books as were everywhere read in the 

churches, and such books alone, could be regarded 

as " handed down and accredited as divine." 

But of all the Fathers, Augustine gives us the 

fullest and clearest testimony on the subject. In 

his treatise on " Christian Doctrine " he tells his 

readers how the question of canonicity was to be 

decided : 

Now, in regard to the canonical Scriptures, he [the 
interpreter] must follow the judgment of the greater 
number of catholic churches; and among these, of 
course, a high place must be given to such as have been 
thought worthy to be the seat of an apostle and to re- 
ceive epistles. Accordingly, among the canonical 
Scriptures, he will judge according to the following 
standard: to prefer those that are received by all the 
catholic churches to those which some do not receive. 
Among those again, which are not received by all, he 
will prefer such as have the sanction of the greater 
number and those of greater authority, to such as are 
held by the smaller number and those of less authority. 
If, however, he shall find that some books are held by 
the greater number of churches, and others by the 
churches of greater authority (though this is not a very 
likely thing to happen), I think that in such a case the 
authority on the two sides is to be looked upon as 
equal/ 

How Augustine would apply this principle he 
makes plain in his catalogue of the Old Testa- 

1 Christ. Doc, ii. 8. 



310 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

ment. He mentions that two books, Wisdom and 
Ecclesiasticus, though sometimes attributed to 
Solomon, were probably written by Jesus the son 
of Sirach, and adds : " Still they are to be reckoned 
among the prophetic books, since they have at- 
tained recognition as being authoritative." 1 The 
first three books of this treatise were written in 
397, but the fourth book was not written till 426, 
in which year the whole was published. It is 
significant that, though Augustine was present 
at the Synod of Carthage in 397, and took part in 
its proceedings, he makes no reference to its de- 
cree regarding the Canon as being authoritative. 
Indeed, why should he? or how could he? The 
Carthage Synod did nothing but declare, as mat- 
ter of fact, what were the canonical Scriptures, 
as actually received by the catholic churches. 
The Synod and Augustine agreed perfectly, alike 
in the principle involved, which both accepted, and 
as to the facts, to which both testify. 

II. A second test of canonicity was recogni- 
tion by the Fathers. Eusebius, in one passage, 
makes this even more prominent than the public 

1 In his " Retractations " Augustine tells us that he made a mistake 
about this, and has since learned that Wisdom was probably not 
written by Jesus son of Sirach, though Ecclesiasticus was. (Book 
II. 4.) 



THE TESTS OF CANONICITY 3II 

reading in the churches. The first Epistle of 
Peter he accepts because " the ancient presbyters 
used it freely in their own writings, as an undis- 
puted work." On the other hand, he declines to 
receive the Acts of Peter and the Gospel, Preach- 
ing, and Apocalypse that also bear his name, 
" because no ecclesiastical writer, ancient or 
modern, has made use of the testimonies drawn 
from them." And accordingly, he quotes what is 
said regarding various books by Papias, Irenseus, 
Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Dionysius of 
Corinth, and other Fathers, most of which quota- 
tions have already appeared in their appropriate 
places in this investigation, and need not be re- 
peated. Some of these quotations bear only in an 
indirect manner on the question of canonicity, be- 
ing rather concerned with the kindred yet dis- 
tinct questions of authorship and historicity. If 
Eusebius had been a more accurate thinker he 
would have made this distinction, but he evidently 
saw little if any difference between these three re- 
lated questions, and evidence that properly be- 
longs to one he often advances to prove another. 
But though no other writer quotes his prede- 
cessors so profusely as Eusebius, the practice is 
by no means confined to him. Irenseus appeals 



312 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

frequently to the testimony of a " certain presby- 
ter," whom he does not name; and by name he 
cites Papias, Polycarp, and Justin as testifying 
to the Christian writings and their content. Ori- 
gen refers to the " men of old " who had handed 
down the Epistle to the Hebrews as Paul's wri- 
ting. It is probable that the authority of the 
Fathers is included in the phrase of Athanasius 
about the books that " had been handed down 
and accredited as divine." Jerome quotes every 
bit of tradition regarding the New Testament 
books that his diligence has enabled him to scrape 
together. 

These instances are not very numerous, perhaps 
less numerous than we might have expected in 
view of the importance that Eusebius seems to 
attach to this test, but we may well remember 
this : the judgment of most men who were worthy 
of being cited as authority passed into and be- 
came lost in the judgment of their churches. 
They expressed their conviction regarding any 
writing, by using their influence to have it ad- 
mitted into or excluded from the collection of 
books preserved in their church and publicly read 
and expounded as a part of divine worship. 
When we note the usage of the churches, there- 



THE TESTS OF CANONICITY 313 

fore, we are always connoting the judgment of 
the Fathers. Having given their testimony in the 
most practical and effective form, and having 
ever before them in general ecclesiastical usage 
the testimony of others, they were little concerned 
about literary evidence of their own judgment, 
and still less to preserve in literary form the judg- 
ment of others. 

III. Apostolic authorship was an important 
test of canonicity, so important that not a few 
writers of authority have insisted that it was the 
chief test, or even the sole test. 1 But this can 
hardly be made good, in face of the fact that three 
Gospels are anonymous, and two of them are not 
even attributed to an apostle; to say nothing of 
the Acts and the Epistle to the Hebrews, both 
of which are anonymous, and one of them never 
attributed to an apostle, while the other was at- 
tributed to an apostle who almost certainly did 
not write it. How any one, with such facts con- 
fronting him, can say that apostolic authorship 
was necessary to canonicity passes comprehen- 
sion. 



1 For example, Harnack, who maintains that Tertullian and 
Irenaeus regard all apostolic writings as canonical, and conversely 
accept nothing as canonical that they do not believe to be apostolic. 

{Dogma, ii. 55, note.) 



314 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

" Apostolicity," say others, was necessary. 
That is to say, though a book might not be written 
by an apostle, it must come from the apostolic 
circle, and embody apostolic ideas and traditions. 
There is much to be said for this, provided it is 
not made the chief test — the facts will not admit 
of that. That apostolicity, in this modified sense, 
came to be regarded as one of the tests of a 
book's claim to a place in the Canon is probably 
true, though little direct evidence can be quoted 
in favor of this theory. There is plenty of indi- 
rect evidence, however, that is hardly explicable 
on any other hypothesis. For example, the tra- 
ditions that early came to be circulated about the 
Gospels of Mark and Luke. Justin 1 is careful to 
say that the Memoirs, or Gospels, were written 
" by apostles and their companions," which indi- 
cates that already the need of some apostolic sanc- 
tion was felt for books that had been admitted to 
the Canon for their own intrinsic worth. Ter- 
tullian is careful to assure his readers that while 
Matthew and John were written by apostles, Mark 
and Luke had as authors " apostolic men," i. e., 
companions of apostles. And still earlier, though 
we have it only through Eusebius, Papias had re- 

1 Dial., 103. 



THE TESTS OF CANONICITY 315 

corded that Mark was a follower and interpreter 
of Peter and wrote down what he remembered 
of Peter's teachings. And Luke, Eusebius tells 
us, in the writing of his Gospel, was " aided by his 
intimacy and his stay with Paul and by his ac- 
quaintance with the rest of the apostles," in which 
he is probably following Irenseus. 1 Why this care 
to establish the close connection of Mark with 
Peter, and of Luke with Paul, save to give to 
their Gospels an apostolic authority that they 
could not otherwise be thought to possess ? 

It was the need of this same shield of apostolic 
authority, no doubt, that led Tertullian to as- 
cribe the Epistle to the Hebrews to Barnabas, and 
Clement to say that it is Luke's translation of a 
Hebrew original by Paul. A clear and positive 
tradition in the West that this book was not 
Paul's kept this Epistle long in a state of dubious 
canonicity, since the West was strongly inclined 
to insist on actual or virtual apostolic author- 
ship, while the East was content with " apos- 
tolicity," that is, that a book came from the apos- 
tolic circle and embodied apostolic doctrine, both 
of which might be confidently affirmed of He- 
brews. 

1 Adv. Haer., iii. 14. 1. 



3l6 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

IV. The content of a book was also taken into 
consideration in deciding its canonicity. That 
is to say, its doctrine must be generally recognized 
to be correct. We are so accustomed ourselves 
to make the Scripture the sole test of doctrine as 
to be inclined to forget that such was not the 
practice of the Church during the centuries while 
the Canon was forming. Side by side with the 
Scriptures was another standard of doctrine, the 
deposit of the faith orally received by the churches 
from the apostles and orally transmitted from 
generation to generation. This was the regula 
Udei, or "rule of faith," of which Tertullian makes 
so much. Twice in his writings he formally 
states what this " rule of faith " was. In one 
case he gives a terse form of the Apostles' Creed ; 
in the other, he paraphrases and elaborates some 
of the clauses, but adds no new article. In both 
he makes it clear that the Catholic churches had 
a standard of Christian doctrine which they be- 
lieved had come by trustworthy transmission di- 
rect from the apostles. This rule of faith and the 
Scriptures mutually appealed to and confirmed 
each other. Whatever did not agree with either 
was rejected, and any writing that did not con- 
form to the rule of faith could not be accepted as 



THE TESTS OF CANONICITY 317 

Scripture. It was because he believed it to con- 
tain false and dangerous doctrine that Tertullian 
protested so strongly against the Shepherd. 

Even before Tertullian this idea of the neces- 
sity of orthodoxy had found firm lodgment in 
the West, at least. The Muratorian Fragment 
objects to the reception into the Catholic Church 
of certain epistles, falsely called Pauline, " for 
it is not suitable for gall to be mixed with honey." 
The books of the Gnostic heretics are also said to 
be rejected. On the other hand, the Shepherd, 
though apparently of unexceptional orthodoxy, 
and to be read for edification, " cannot be publicly 
read in the churches to the people," evidently be- 
cause it has no shadow of claim to apostolicity, 
having been written " very recently in our own 
times in the city of Rome," by one Hermas, 
" while his brother, Pius, occupied the chair of 
the Church of Rome." Even a book that was at 
least believed to be from the pen of a Roman 
bishop's brother could not be admitted to be 
canonical in the West, if this is really a Western 
document. 

V. Finally, the capacity of a book to edify was 
an accepted test of canonicity. Tertullian 1 avows 

*De Vel. Virg., c. 3- 



318 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

this in his discussion of the canonicity of Enoch, 
and of course his principle would apply equally 
to all Christian writings : " But since Enoch in 
the same Scripture has preached likewise concern- 
ing the Lord, nothing at all must be rejected by us 
which pertains to us ; and we read that ' every 
Scripture suitable for edification is divinely in- 
spired.' " * This rendering of 2 Tim. 3 : 16 is 
not unimpeachable, but that is not the point — the 
point is that Tertullian regards edification as im- 
plying inspiration, and hence canonicity. Euse- 
bius evidently held a similar opinion and, what 
is far more significant, bears witness that such 
an opinion was general. Speaking of the Second 
Epistle of Peter, he says, " we have learned that 
this extant second epistle ought not to be re- 
ceived [into full canonicity], but as it appeared 
profitable to many, it has been used with the other 
Scriptures." That is to say, because it was profit- 
able some churches used it for public reading, so 
that it was a candidate for canonicity, but not yet 
fully approved. Of the Shepherd he says, that 
while it is rejected by some, " by others it is 

1 Tertullian frankly admits that " the Scripture of Enoch," as he 
calls it, is not in the Jewish Canon, and hence that some Christians 
do not receive it; but he argues that the Jews evidently rejected it 
because it testified too clearly of Christ. 



THE TESTS OF CANONICITY 319 

considered quite indispensable, especially to those 
who need instruction in the elements of the faith," 
and hence has been publicly read in the churches. 
But eventually the Shepherd was rejected from 
the Canon. 

We find similar facts mentioned down to the 
fifth century, even after the question of the Canon 
must be regarded as definitely settled. A number 
of books — the Epistles of Clement and Barnabas 
and the Shepherd at least — for some generations 
maintained a place as a sort of appendix to the 
Canon, because of their recognized value for 
edification. We may find it a little difficult to 
comprehend why these books were so highly es- 
teemed, but that is not at all material. The un- 
mistakable fact is that they were so esteemed 
down to the sixth or seventh century. That es- 
teem was sufficient to keep them in use as edifying 
writings, but not enough to ensure them a place in 
the Canon. 

Must not the conclusion be drawn from this 
fact that edification was considered a less im- 
portant formal qualification than apostolicity ? 
No book could be admitted to the Canon that 
wholly lacked this edifying quality — though it 
must be confessed that the Fathers attribute very 



320 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

little edification to some of the canonical books — 
but capacity to edify seems not to have been suf- 
ficient to secure canonical recognition for a book, 
else the Shepherd would almost certainly have 
secured it. For, with the single exception of Ter- 
tullian, all the Fathers speak well of it ; some quote 
it with utmost respect ; at least one explicitly de- 
clares it to be inspired; and all these commenda- 
tions fairly reflected the common judgment of 
Christian readers. 

And yet, though the Fathers did not adequately 
appreciate the fact, and hence have imperfectly 
testified to it, can we avoid the conclusion that 
this was the really decisive test, both for and 
against the admission of books to the Canon? 
The universal, even though so largely silent, con- 
viction of the Church as to the supreme worth of 
certain books for the guidance and building up of 
Christian character must have been the principle 
on which the fact of Catholic usage rested. We 
can reach this conclusion not only by the exami- 
nation of the direct evidence, not inconsiderable 
in itself, but by a process of exclusion. There 
is no other adequate motive assignable. That of 
which Harnack and others make so much, the de- 
sire to build up a compact orthodox literature, to 



THE TESTS OF CANONIClTY 32 1 

serve as a defense against heresy, we have seen 
fails to explain more than a small part of the 
facts. As a co-ordinating principle to account 
for the whole process of Canon-making it is 
miserably inadequate. But the hypothesis that 
Catholic usage, which is the actual historic basis 
of the Canon, was itself based on the silent con- 
viction of the Church, gradually reached through 
the Christian experience of generations, that these 
books had an intrinsic divine character, and were 
preeminently fitted to edify the saints, will ac- 
count for all the facts. No other hypothesis ever 
proposed so satisfactorily accounts for all that is 
known, while contradicting none of our knowl- 
edge, as does this. 

This test that the Fathers of the first five cen- 
turies treat as if it were of secondary value, seems 
to Protestant evangelical Christians of the pres- 
ent day the only decisive test ; while the test upon 
which the first centuries laid so prepondera- 
ting stress, the custom of the Catholic churches, 
seems to us of very little worth. With the be- 
ginning of the Reformation, there began careful 
inquiry into the validity of the things that had 
been established by the custom of the Church, 
and most of them were presently disallowed as 
v 



$22 OCTR NEW TESTAMENT 

unknown to the churches established by the 
apostles and, therefore, at best, to be regarded 
as excrescences on primitive Christianity. The 
Canon could not and did not escape examination, 
though it cannot be said that it was at that time 
given any rigid and scientific scrutiny. It was 
perceived, however, that some better basis must 
be found for the authority of Scripture than the 
mere custom of the Church, or it could not be 
made the final court of appeal in the controversies 
then raging. In other words, some answer had to 
be found to the question, On what does canon- 
icity depend? Do we receive the books called 
the New Testament because the Church has au- 
thoritatively declared them to be Scripture? Or 
do we receive these books as Scripture, the in- 
spired and authoritative word of God, because of 
their own intrinsic value? And if the latter, what 
is the final guarantee of their value? 

Erasmus, who fully shared the critical doubts 
of his age regarding the authorship of some 
of the books, was yet ready to submit to the voice 
of authority, spoken through the Church. " Ac- 
cording to human reason," he says, " I neither 
believe that the Epistle to the Hebrews is the 
work of Paul or of Luke, nor that the second 



THE TESTS OF CANONICITY 323 

Epistle of Peter was written by Peter, nor that 
the Apocalypse is from John the apostle. . . 
Nevertheless, if the Church receives the titles, I 
condemn my doubts, for the expressed judgment 
of the Church counts for more with me than 
human reasons of any sort." * He would, in 
other words, accept the decision of the Church, 
not merely as to the ecclesiastical fact of 
canonicity, but as to the historical fact of author- 
ship. If the Church said a thing was so, Erasmus 
would hold that it was so, even if he knew it 
wasn't so! And, of course, every loyal Roman 
Catholic must always be ready to stultify him- 
self in just that way. 

But the Reformers were not ready to commit 
that sort of intellectual hara-kiri. To Luther, 
Christianity was a personal experience of salva- 
tion by grace, and its central truth was the sin- 
ner's justification by faith alone in Christ and 
his work of expiation, to the absolute exclusion of 
all merit gained by works. To him, therefore, 
canonicity was determined by the attitude of a 
book toward these particular ideas, which he held 
to be fundamental. " There is the true touch- 
stone to test all books, when one sees whether 

1 Op., ix. 864. 



324 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

they are concerned with Christ or not, since all 
Scripture ought to show us Christ (Rom. 3), 
and St. Paul will nothing but Christ (1 Cor. 2). 
What Christ does not teach is not apostolic, even 
though Peter or Paul should teach it; on the 
other hand, what Christ teaches would be apos- 
tolic though it were said by Judas, Annas, Pilate, 
or Herod." 1 The whole Bible ought to preach 
Christ and his salvation, otherwise it was no 
Bible. Any book that was utterly silent about 
Christ might be tolerated, but had no place in 
the Canon ; while any book that was in any way 
inconsistent with these ideas ought not to be 
tolerated by Christians at all. From his point of 
view, therefore, the Gospel of John, the Pauline 
Epistles (especially Romans and Galatians), and 
the first Epistle of Peter, as they contain the 
very marrow of the Gospel, are the important 
books of the Canon and are to be preferred to all 
others. 2 This was why he felt bound to reject 
from the Canon the Epistles of James and Jude, 
the Epistle to the Hebrews, and the Apocalypse, 
and place them at the end of the volume in his 
version of the New Testament, while in the table 

1 Preface to James, German Works 73 : 157. 

2 hoc. cit., 73 : 114; Preface to the New Testament, 1522. 



THE TESTS OF CANONICITY 325 

of contents their titles were separated by a signif- 
icant interval from the first twenty-three books, 
which are further distinguished by being num- 
bered, while the last four are not. 

And Luther makes abundantly plain in his 
various prefaces his reason for this rejection of 
the authority of these books. It rests entirely on 
his estimate of their intrinsic worth. It is true 
that he mentions the fact of their insufficient his- 
torical attestation, but evidently that is not the 
real, impelling reason for his rejection of them, 
for Second Peter is even less attested ; and he does 
not say a word about that, but puts it in his 
Canon. Defective historical attestation never 
troubled him. He objects to James because of its 
unsound doctrine (as he thought) of justification 
by works. He objects to Hebrews because in three 
places (chapters 6, 10, 12) it seems to him to 
deny the possibility of repentance for sins com- 
mitted after baptism, contrary to the Gospels and 
the Epistles of Paul. Nevertheless, he calls the 
setting forth of Christ's priesthood in this Epistle 
" masterly." The Epistle of Jude contains noth- 
ing that is fundamental to the Christian faith and 
is " useless." The Apocalypse he held to be 
neither apostolic nor prophetic. It contains only 



3^6 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

images and visions which nobody can understand, 
and Christ is neither taught nor acknowledged ! * 
Some of these views are purely personal, sub- 
jective, and even whimsical. They did not con- 
vince the followers of Luther; for, though 
Lutherans have always retained in their German 
Bible the peculiar arrangement of the New Testa- 
ment books adopted by its translator, they very 
early abandoned his views of the last four books, 
and developed an extreme theory of the verbal 
inspiration and absolute authority of the whole 
Canon. The value of Luther's work consists in 
the fact that he overthrew, so far as the Protes- 
tant world is concerned, the idea that the authority 
of the Canon rests on no better foundation than 
the custom of the Church. The books of the New 
Testament have an intrinsic value, or else they 
lack intrinsic value, and the question of their ac- 
ception or rejection turns on the estimate of that 
value. The weak point in Luther's statement of 
principle was that it provided no criterion of 
value. He seems to have assumed that each be- 
liever has a right to decide the matter for himself 
— as, in a sense, the right of private judgment 

1 See the Prefaces to these books in the volume of Luther's Ger- 
man works already cited. 



THE TESTS OF CANONICITY 327 

implies — and so he proceeded to make his own 
Canon, and then, with characteristic inconsist- 
ency, to impose that on others, so far as he was 
able. 

The other Reformers perceived this defect in 
Luther's teaching, and deplored the practical re- 
sults to which it led him. They therefore devoted 
themselves to strengthening this weak place in the 
Protestant position regarding the Canon. It was 
Calvin, the greatest theologian of the Reforma- 
tion, who spoke the decisive word on this, as on 
so many other questions then in dispute. The 
earlier editions of his " Institutes " did not con- 
tain a discussion of the Holy Scriptures, but four 
chapters of Book I., of the final edition of 1559, 
are given to this subject. Many ask, he says, 
" who can assure us that the Scriptures proceeded 
from God; who guarantee that they have come 
down safe and unimpaired to our times ; who per- 
suade us that this book is to be received with 
reverence, and that one expunged from the list, 
did not the Church regulate these things with 
certainty?" Such questions he stigmatizes as 
profane and " insult to the Holy Spirit." " Noth- 
ing can be more absurd than the fiction that the 
power of judging Scripture is in the Church, and 



$28 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

that on her nod its certainty depends. When the 
Church receives it and gives it the stamp of her 
authority, she does not make that authentic which 
was otherwise doubtful or controverted, but, ac- 
knowledging it as the truth of God, she, as in 
duty bound, shows her reverence by an unhesi- 
tating assent. As to the question, How shall we 
be persuaded that it came from God without re- 
curring to a decree of the Church? it is just the 
same as if it were asked, How shall we learn to 
distinguish light from darkness, white from black, 
sweet from bitter ? Scripture bears upon the face 
of it as clear evidence of its truth as white and 
black do of their color, sweet and bitter of their 
taste." 

So far, indeed, Calvin has hardly progressed 
beyond Luther. But he proceeds to ask how we 
may be certain of this divine origin of the Scrip- 
tures, and this is his answer : " If then we would 
consult most effectually for our consciences, and 
save them from being driven about in a whirl of 
uncertainty, from wavering, and even stumbling 
at the smallest obstacle, our conviction of the 
truth of Scripture must be derived from a higher 
source than human conjectures, judgments, or 
reasons; namely, the secret testimony of the 



THE TESTS OF CANONICITY 7> 2 9 

Spirit." And again: " For as God alone can 
properly bear witness to his own words, so these 
words will not obtain full credit in the hearts of 
men, until they are sealed by the inward testi- 
mony of the Spirit. The same Spirit, therefore, 
who spoke by the mouth of the prophets, must 
penetrate our hearts, in order to convince us 
that they faithfully delivered the message with 
which they were divinely intrusted." And he 
sums up the whole discussion in the following: 
" Let it therefore be held as fixed, that those 
who are inwardly taught by the Holy Spirit 
acquiesce implicitly in the Scripture; that Scrip- 
ture carrying its own evidence along with it, 
deigns not to submit to proofs and arguments, but 
owes the full conviction with which we ought to 
receive it to the testimony of the Spirit. Enlight- 
ened by him, we no longer believe, either on our 
own judgment or that of others, that the Scrip- 
tures are from God; but, in a way superior to 
human judgment, feel perfectly assured — as much 
so as if we beheld the divine image impressed on 
it — that it came to us, by the instrumentality of 
men, from the very mouth of God." 1 

1 Calvin's " Institutes," Book I., chap. 7. Calvin Translation 
Society's ed. 



33° OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

It is a fair corollary from this principle, though 
Calvin does not formally draw it, that the Spirit 
will say the same thing to all believers, since he is 
the author of truth and not of falsehood, of order 
and not of confusion. Therefore a consensus of 
Christian experience and Christian conviction 
regarding the Scriptures is to be expected, and 
has in fact been reached. In that consensus we 
have complete and satisfactory attestation that 
the books composing our New Testament Canon, 
and those only, are worthy to be received as Holy 
Scripture. The testimony of the Spirit to the 
hearts of believers during so many generations 
cannot be wrong. Criticism may say what it 
will about the authorship and date of these books 
— and scholars are to be jealously protected in 
their right to investigate freely and to print boldly 
the results of their work — but, as to the intrinsic 
quality, the divine origin and religious authority 
of these books we have a rock-based conviction, 
because it is based on the fact that the same Spirit 
that dwelt in those who wrote the books has 
spoken in our hearts and vouches for their divine 
origin and power. 

This has ever remained the Protestant doctrine, 
and wherever the doctrine has been officially de- 



THE TESTS OF CANONICITY 33 1 

fined, it has been in these terms or their equiva- 
lent. The Belgic Confession (1561) declares: 

Art. V. We receive all these books, and these only, 
as holy and canonical, for the regulation, foundation, 
and confirmation of our faith; believing, without any 
doubt, all things contained in them, not so much be- 
cause the Church receives and approves them as such, 
but more especially because the Holy Ghost witnesseth 
in our hearts that they are of God, whereof they carry 
the evidence in themselves. For the very blind are 
able to perceive that the things foretold in them are 
fulfilling. 1 

To the same purport exactly is the French Con- 
fession of 1559: 

Art. IV. We know these books to be canonical, and 
the sure rule of our faith, not so much by the common 
accord and consent of the Church, as by the testimony 
and inward illumination of the Holy Spirit, which 
enables us to distinguish them from other ecclesiastical 
books, upon which, however useful, we cannot found 
any articles of faith. 2 

The clearest and most unmistakable statement 
of the doctrine, however, is to be found in the first 
chapter of the Westminster Confession (1647), 
entitled " Of the Holy Scripture " : 

IV. The authority of the holy Scripture, for which 
it ought to be believed and obeyed, dependeth not upon 

1 Schaff, " Creeds of Christendom," Vol. III., pp. 386, 387. 
'Ibid., Vol. III., p. 361. 



33^ OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

the testimony of any man or church, but wholly upon 
God (who is truth itself), the Author thereof; and 
therefore it is to be received, because it is the word of 
God. 

V. We may be moved and induced by the testimony 
of the Church to an high and reverent esteem of the 
holy Scripture; and the heavenliness of the matter, the 
efficacy of the doctrine, the majesty of the style, the 
consent of all the parts, the scope of the whole (which 
is to give all glory to God), the full discovery it makes 
of the only way of man's salvation, the many other in- 
comparable excellencies, and the entire perfection 
thereof, are arguments whereby it doth abundantly 
evidence itself to be the word of God; yet, notwith- 
standing, our full persuasion and assurance of the in- 
fallible truth and divine authority thereof, is from the 
inward work of the Holy Spirit, bearing witness by and 
with the word in our hearts. 1 

But it may be asked, Does this doctrine of a 
consensus of Christian experience impose an obli- 
gation on every believer to accept the Canon of 
the New Testament, even if he feels personal 
doubt or objection in the case of some book or 
books? In other words, Is the individual Chris- 
tian's right and duty of private judgment abro- 
gated by the belief of the majority? The ques- 
tion is pertinent, and deserves a candid answer. 
And that answer can only be, No. Nothing can 
relieve each believer of the duty of private judg- 

1 Ibid., Vol. III., pp. 6o->, 603. 



THE TESTS OF CANONICITY 333 

ment, no power can take from him the right, for 
to his own Master each of his servants must stand 
or fall. The voice of the Spirit in my own heart 
is the only voice that can convince me. Unless a 
book appeals to my soul as divine in its origin 
and authority, nothing can convince me that it is 
divine. That every believer has a right to say, 
nay, it is his duty to say it, and to die for it, if 
need be. But many well-meaning Christians 
have mistaken some other voice for a voice of 
the Spirit. We do well to cultivate a meek and 
quiet spirit, therefore, and to compare our ex- 
perience and convictions with those of others, lest 
we be misled into error, instead of led into truth. 
Every believer of necessity will have his own 
private Canon of Scripture. By that is not meant 
that he will dogmatically exclude any book of 
the present Canon or add any book that is not 
there. But not every book of the Canon makes 
an equal appeal to every believer; the voice of 
the Spirit attests to each of us the divine quality 
of some books more clearly than others. If we 
were to be quite honest, probably all of us would 
confess that there are some books that we read 
infrequently, and others perhaps not at all, while 
of some we never tire. We might even say that 



334 °UR NEW TESTAMENT 

we had received more spiritual profit and edifica- 
tion in Christian character from the " Pilgrim's 
Progress " or the " The Imitation of Christ " than 
from the Epistle of Jude, if we were quite candid 
and outspoken. Luther, who was given to strong 
statements, said that if a man had the fourth 
Gospel and Romans, with First Peter and First 
John, it would not matter if he had no other book 
of the New Testament. We each have our list, 
different from Luther's, perhaps no two exactly 
agreeing, of favorite books. Those are our 
private Canon. For our real Canon is what we 
know and rightly appreciate of the New Testa- 
ment, and a good many who pride themselves on 
their orthodox views regarding the Scriptures 
could carry their real Canon in their vest pockets 
and still have ample room for a watch or a roll 
of greenbacks. 



XI 



CONCLUSION 



XI 



OUR investigation is completed. The reader 
has in his possession all the material facts 
relating to the history of the Canon, together 
with the inferences that may be rationally drawn 
from them. He has been able to test for himself 
rigorously every proposed inference, and he may, 
if he choose, verify the accuracy of every state- 
ment of fact. It remains only to summarize, 
briefly and clearly, the steps in the process and 
the conclusions reached. 

1. Our point of departure is the existence 
among the Jews, at the beginning of the Christian 
era, of the synagogue worship and the idea of a 
Canon of Scripture. That this Canon may not 
have been absolutely fixed, or that their ideas 
about it may not have been accepted by Chris- 
tians, without some modification, are matters of 
detail that in no wise affect the material fact. The 
law and the prophets were read every Sabbath in 
every synagogue, and were accepted as Scrip- 
tures of divine origin and authority. 

2. It was to Jews, with such training and hav- 

w 337 



3$S OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

ing such ideas, that the gospel was first preached, 
and it was of such Jews that the first Christian 
churches were largely composed. In their as- 
semblies as Christians they naturally continued 
their Jewish customs — the law and the prophets 
were continually read. At the same time an oral 
gospel was as continually proclaimed. To the 
Christian believer the words of the Lord Jesus 
were of supreme authority, and the Jewish Scrip- 
tures were valued largely because they testified 
of him. That this conception of relative authority 
everywhere prevailed, nobody can doubt who has 
read attentively the New Testament documents. 
Jesus is the Way, the Truth, the Life. He speaks 
" as one having authority, and not as their 
scribes." In him were hid all the treasures of 
wisdom. And not Paul only, but all the apostles, 
made continual use of the method that Philip pur- 
sued with the eunuch, when " beginning from 
this Scripture," the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, 
" he preached unto him Jesus." The preaching 
of Peter as recorded in the Acts, and the same 
apostle's use of the Old Testament in his writings, 
the argument of the Epistle to the Hebrews, all 
follow the same principle. To the apostles the 
significance of the Old Testament was that it 



conclusion 339 

everywhere confirmed their contention that Jesus 
was the Messiah. 

3. The apostles were the living embodiment of 
the teachings of Jesus, witnesses of his resurrec- 
tion, and proclaimers of the truth he had taught. 
Therefore, when they began to write letters to 
the churches, their words were received as the 
words of the Lord. Paul, at least, did not hesi- 
tate to claim that he wrote under the direction of 
the Spirit of Christ. It would necessarily follow 
that such letters would be jealously preserved, as 
a treasure beyond price, by the churches to which 
they were sent. 

4. But these letters were written to be read 
publicly at the meetings of the churches. Some 
of them were addressed to groups of churches, 
each of which would certainly keep a copy. They 
would be read, not once or twice, but many times. 
Gradually there would be interchange of copies, 
and a growing desire in each church to have as 
complete a collection as possible. In this way, a 
collection of Paul's Epistles was probably in ex- 
istence in the churches, both East and West, by 
the beginning of the second century, for Igna- 
tius and Polycarp show acquaintance with nearly 
every one of them, even if they do not formally 



34° OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

quote from them. Even Clement and the Di- 
dache, in the last decade of the first century, show 
almost as extensive knowledge of them. 

5. The Gospels do not seem to have been 
written for public reading, but rather for private 
use. But the authority always attributed to the 
words of Jesus would naturally lead to their being 
read in the churches almost as soon as they were 
published. The same tendency that led to the 
making of collections of Paul's Epistles would 
lead the churches to make collections of the Gos- 
pels. In Justin's time we have the first mention 
of the public reading of the Gospels, and he men- 
tions it as an established custom, for the growth 
of which we must allow a full generation. This 
carries back the collection and reading of the 
Gospels to the first quarter of the second century, 
and it may well have begun considerably earlier. 

6. Only one hypothesis can explain this action 
of the churches. They would never have troubled 
themselves to preserve and collect, they would 
never have publicly read in their assemblies for 
worship, writings that they did not believe to be 
of divine origin and to possess divine authority. 
This belief was so much a matter of course with 
them that it never occurred to them to assert it 



CONCLUSION 34I 

in so many words. It is the tacit assumption that 
underlies all the citations of the earliest Fathers, 
and gives to such citations their whole signifi- 
cance. The rise of the heretical sects in the 
second century furnished an occasion for the 
formal assertion of the divine authority of the 
apostolic writings, and from this time on we find 
them definitely quoted as Scripture. They were 
now appealed to as the decisive confirmation of 
truth and the decisive condemnation of error. 

7. Heresy also hastened the decision of the 
churches concerning the books that should be re- 
garded as Scripture. Up to this time there had 
been collections, but no collection. That is to say, 
definite ideas regarding the exact limits of the 
Canon cannot be discovered until the latter dec- 
ades of the second century. Many books were 
now in circulation, claiming apostolic origin and 
authority. Some of these were read in all the 
churches, some were read in most of the churches, 
some were read in comparatively few churches. 
By his rejection of all books save the Epistles of 
Paul and the Gospel of Luke, and these in a form 
more or less incomplete and mutilated, Marcion 
compelled the Catholic churches to define their 
latent ideas about the Scriptures, assert the 



342 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

authority of some of the books that he had re- 
jected, and decide whether others also should be 
accepted. The insistence by the Montanists on 
the continuous gift of inspiration and prophecy 
led the Church to emphasize the final authority 
of the apostolic writings as a rule of faith. The 
question of the Canon would have forced itself on 
the Church sooner or later, if there had been no 
heresy, but heresy insured its consideration 
sooner. 

8. In the last quarter of the second century we 
begin to find evidence of a definite decision of this 
question. In the Muratorian Canon and in the 
writings of Irenseus and Tertullian, we discover 
tolerably clear proof of the universal acceptance 
as Scripture of twenty books that claim apostolic 
origin and authority — the so-called Provisional 
Canon — consisting of the four Gospels, thirteen 
Epistles of Paul, the Acts, First John and First 
Peter. At the same time, there are many other 
books that have an acceptance more or less wide — 
the remaining seven of our present Canon, and an 
undefined number of others, of which the most 
prominent are the Epistles of Clement, the Epistle 
of Barnabas, and the Shepherd. 

9. About this time also we can trace in the East 



conclusion 343 

the making of a collection of epistles supple- 
mentary to the Pauline, which came to be known 
as the Catholic Epistles. Alexandria was the 
center of this process, which was definitely com- 
pleted before the close of the second century. The 
Epistle to the Hebrews was also definitely ac- 
cepted there, not at first as Pauline, but as " apos- 
tolic," that is, coming from some one of the 
immediate followers and companions of the apos- 
tles. Gradually the tradition of a Pauline author- 
ship prevailed in the East. In the West, on the 
contrary, where in the Epistle of Clement we have 
the earliest attestation of Hebrews, the tradition 
of a non-Pauline authorship lingered to the very 
last, being revived even during the Middle Ages, 
and caused this to be the last book accepted. 

10. A similar doubt concerning the Apocalypse 
lingered in the East, while the West gave it a 
fairly early acceptance in the second century. 
This Eastern opposition to this book was as 
slowly overcome as was the Western to He- 
brews, and a small part of the Eastern Church 
never did accept the Apocalypse, as is shown by its 
absence from the Syrian and Egyptian versions. 
Even in the West, the book was generally placed 
last in the MSS and versions, 



344 0UR NEW TESTAMENT 

ii. No one church or region had a predomi- 
nant influence in the formation, of the Canon. 
While the Canon was the result of the influence 
and experience of the whole Church, if any one 
region was more potent than another it was 
Alexandria, which bred great scholars and bish- 
ops in the centuries when Rome failed to produce 
a single man above mediocrity. It would be un- 
historical to say that Alexandria made the Canon, 
precisely as it is unhistorical to say that Rome 
made it — with this difference, however, that 
enough evidence is producible to make the former 
proposition seem plausible to the untrained in 
historical research, while for the latter statement 
not one smallest tittle of proof can be found in 
the whole range of patristic literature. Of the 
seven books finally added to the twenty of the 
Provisional Canon, six are definitely due to the 
initiative and influence of Alexandria. It was her 
insistence on Hebrews that finally overcame the 
doubts of the West. It was the acceptance of the 
" seven Catholic Epistles " at Alexandria, from 
the time of Clement, that at length induced the 
West to accept James, Jude, Second and Third 
John, and above all Second Peter. In one point 
only was the West more potent than the East, in 



conclusion 345 

securing the addition to the Canon of the Apoca- 
lypse. If Alexandria had been left utterly to her- 
self, the Canon would probably have lacked that 
book. We cannot, however, trace any direct 
agency of the Church of Rome in adding to the 
Canon a book that Luther called a " dumb 
prophecy," that Zwingli said " is not a book of the 
Canon," that Calvin omitted altogether from his 
commentaries. 

12. At the end of the fourth century we find a 
virtually complete agreement of the churches, 
East and West, regarding the Canon. Athana- 
sius and Cyril of Jerusalem for the East, Augus- 
tine and Jerome for the West, speak with one 
voice, and the books of which all testify as those 
received in the churches are the books of our 
present Canon. The first of them to speak is 
Athanasius, so that the earliest list of canonical 
books that exactly agrees with our own is Alex- 
andrine and belongs to the year 367. No bishop 
of the Roman Church is reported to have made 
any utterance on the Canon before Innocent I, 
416. And yet we are gravely assured that our 
Canon is Roman, and that if Alexandria had 
had the making of it, we should have a very dif- 
ferent Canon ! The conclusion warranted by the 



346 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

facts would appear to be this: of all the Patri- 
archal churches, Rome had the least influence in 
the formation of the Canon. 

13. This unanimity in the Church was not 
produced by ecclesiastical authority. In the early 
stages of the process there is little evidence of 
episcopal interference, no evidence of episcopal 
predominance. The bishops, we are entitled to 
conclude, had the same influence in the matter of 
the Canon that they had in the settlement of all 
ecclesiastical questions, and no more. The de- 
cision of the Church was usually expressed 
through its official head, the bishop, but it was 
always necessary that his decision should be 
approved by at least a majority of the whole 
Church. If episcopal agency in the formation 
of the Canon were much more in evidence than 
it actually is, we should still be compelled to view 
this agency as only the orderly way in which the 
inward conviction of the whole Church found 
formal expression. In the first four centuries, 
we know that episcopal power was no despotism. 
Even had each bishop been a despot, there was 
no concert of action, and the problem of account- 
ing for the ultimate unanimity of the decision 
would be little helped toward solution by accepting 



conclusion 347 

a hypothesis of episcopal omnipotence. Nor was 
there any conciliar action, save the doubly doubt- 
ful case of Laodicea, preceding the attainment of 
unanimity. The synod of Carthage assumes the 
existence of certain " canonical " books, cata- 
logues them, and declares that no others shall be 
read in the churches. Popes and councils only 
confirm the Canon already accepted with virtual 
unanimity. So far as the New Testament is con- 
cerned, that is true even of the Council of Trent. 
14. This tracing of the historic evolution of the 
Canon provides no basis for its acceptance by a 
Protestant. It is a historical fact that we actually 
receive our New Testament Canon from the 
Catholic Church of the first four centuries. But 
we do not continue to hold the Canon because 
the Catholic Church formed it, for the dicta of 
that Church have no authority for us. We hold 
the Canon because the same considerations that 
led the Catholic Church to make this Canon are 
still powerful to convince us that these books 
and no others should be received as the word of 
God. And yet we cannot conclude, with West- 
cott and others, that the history of the Canon 
proves the Church to have been guided in its 
selection of books by the Holy Spirit. There is 



348 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

no rational justification for such a conclusion, 
save to a Catholic. For there was equal una- 
nimity in the development of a hierarchy, of an 
elaborate system of ritual, of the doctrine of 
sacramental grace — of all, in a word, that was 
Catholic, as opposed to Protestant and evangeli- 
cal. Shall we conclude that the Spirit of God 
directed these developments also? Rome un- 
hesitatingly answers, Yes. But can we answer, 
Yes ? And if not, by what criterion may we decide 
that unanimity regarding the Canon proves the 
guidance of the Spirit of God, while unanimity 
in the development of a hierarchy proves nothing 
of the sort? 

15. The Reformers first stated the true basis on 
which the authority of the Canon rests : the per- 
ception by the believer, through the aid of the 
Holy Spirit, that there is a divine quality, and 
hence a divine authority, in the books of the 
Canon. The question used to be whether there 
was any human element in the Scriptures; the 
question now is, whether there is anything divine 
in them. And not all the Fathers and not all the 
Councils that the Church has ever known can 
give to the longing heart such assurance of the 
divine origin and divine authority of the New 



conclusion 349 

Testament as the book itself gives to one who has 
been born again of the Spirit of God. One does 
not more certainly recognize the voice of his 
friend, calling to him out of the dark, than a child 
of God knows his Father's voice when he reads 
his word. The Holy Spirit in the believer's 
heart confirms what the same Holy Spirit has 
guided apostles and others to write. Like all 
other perceptions, this is an ultimate fact, that 
can neither be analyzed nor proved, but must be 
experienced. He who has experienced it can 
never doubt either its reality or its truth. This 
perception may be clearer in some believers than 
in others; it may be clearer in regard to some 
books than with others. But the general con- 
sensus of experience throughout Christendom, 
and that not for a single generation, but for age 
after age, ought to be considered decisive regard- 
ing the quality of a book. 

1 6. It was this perception of a divine quality in 
a book that gave it place in the Canon in the first 
instance, and has kept it there permanently. The 
voice of a majority of churches in some region, 
or for a limited time, may have placed a book 
in the Canon that ultimately failed to make good 
its title to canonicity. Such was the case, for ex- 



S^o our new testament 

ample, with the Shepherd. On the other hand, 
the voice of a majority of churches in some re- 
gion, or for a limited time, may have excluded 
from the Canon a book that ultimately was able 
to make good its claim to canonicity. Such was 
the case with the Apocalypse. The decisive fac- 
tor, in the long run, in the case of every book 
that claimed to be Scripture was the consensus of 
Christian experience in the whole Church, and 
for more than a single generation, that it pos- 
sessed an exceptional divine quality, which fitted 
it " for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for 
instruction which is in righteousness." 

17. Therefore, and finally, the Canon of the 
New Testament was not " closed " by ecclesias- 
tical authority. The phrase " closed Canon " is 
not a locution or idea of the Fathers, but of 
modern writers. It were rash to assert that in 
the vast range of patristic literature anything has 
never been said, but the learned writers who have 
been delving into the Fathers for years have not 
found and cited a single passage where a Father 
speaks of a " closed " Canon. The Canon never 
was closed, except in the sense that a time came 
when production ceased of books that the Chris- 
tian consciousness recognized as belonging in the 



CONCLUSION 351 

same class with those that constitute the Canon. 
At first some thought there were other books of 
the same quality and value, and they were read in 
the churches and cited as Scripture; then men 
began to doubt, and they were believed to be 
edifying books, but not canonical; long since 
they ceased even to edify. 

If there was ever a book, or collection of books, 
that could be accurately described as the survival 
of the fittest, then the New Testament is such a 
book. And yet this gradual process of testing and 
winnowing, extending over a period of three cen- 
turies, has been called an " arbitrary selection." 
If there is any phrase in our language that 
would be less true to the historic fact, one would 
be glad to know what it is. Julicher is little in- 
clined to any opinion that is orthodox or tra- 
ditional, but on this point he says : " A gradual 
process made the books of the New Testament 
the most sacred writings of Christendom. They 
did not attain this position immediately upon their 
completion ; but it would be equally untrue to sup- 
pose that on a given day the decision of a majority 
in the synod transformed them from ordinary 
books into divine records. The New Testament 
Canon is the result of a long-continued process, 



35 2 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

the first phases of which we have to reconstruct 
by hypothesis, since direct testimony from such 
distant antiquity is not forthcoming. One thing 
is certain : before a book was canonized it must 
have been tenderly and highly prized. And more- 
over, this love and high esteem must have 
been very widely spread if canonization not only 
aroused no opposition, but was nowhere con- 
sidered as an innovation." * 

And where is the man who will now allege — 
and prove — that this consensus of the Christian 
experience of nineteen centuries has made any 
serious error? Of the books that were finally 
dropped from the Canon, is there one that any 
sober man of any serious scholarly attainments 
or recognized literary taste or spiritual discern- 
ment, would have restored? Not the Shepherd, 
surely, with its continual smirk of sex-conscious- 
ness and its silly allegorical twaddle. Hardly the 
Epistle of Clement, for an age that stumbles over 
the Gadarene pigs would fall down altogether if 
asked to believe the fable of the phoenix. Com- 
mentators to-day find it hard enough to accept 
some of Paul's Old Testament exegesis; what 
would they do if they must accept and justify the 

1 Introduction, p. 476. 



conclusion 353 

utter absurdities of the Epistle of Barnabas ? And 
these are confessedly the best of the Notha of 
Eusebius; if these cannot make a valid claim to 
canonicity, no other Christian writing of an- 
tiquity can. 

On the other hand, what book is there in our 
present Canon for the exclusion of which con- 
vincing reasons can be given? Not reasons that 
might convince here and there a Christian, but 
reasons that would or should convince the church 
at large? It is true that we do not all agree 
in our estimate of the relative value of the canoni- 
cal books. For myself, the Epistle of Jude and 
Second and Third John weigh little. My per- 
ception of any divine quality in them is weak, if 
not entirely lacking. I do not derive any con- 
siderable amount of spiritual instruction or com- 
fort from them. Probably many readers could 
make a similar confession, naming other books, 
possibly, than these. But I would not, therefore, 
vote to remove these books from the Canon, for, 
unlike Luther, I do not regard my perceptions 
and my limited experience as the norm for all 
others. If the books in question do not fully ap- 
prove themselves to me as divine, it is just possible 
that the defect may be in the dulness of my spirit- 



354 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

ual apprehension, not in the books. They have 
approved themselves to multitudes of other Chris- 
tians. All of us are wiser than any one of us. 
Wherefore, I am sorry that I cannot find in these 
books what others have found there, and am con- 
vinced that such humility is good for me, and 
should be cultivated, rather than the arrogance 
of spirit that would reject as worthless to anybody 
that which I do not find worthful to myself. 

The objection may be made to this interpre- 
tation of the formation of the Canon — and that 
it is interpretation, as well as history, is admitted : 
any treatment of the formation of the Canon must 
be both — that it leaves too much to subjective 
impressions. The phrases " Christian conscious- 
ness " and " Christian experience " connote ideas 
that are distrusted by many Christians, and " con- 
sensus " is also a word of suspicious vagueness, 
as it seems to many. Any test that is subjective 
is thought to be so far uncertain. And if this in- 
terpretation answers some questions, it suggests 
others: If the consensus of Christian experience 
has settled the Canon, does it not logically follow 
that a different consensus of Christian experience 
might unsettle it? If books became canonical 
because all Christians perceived in them a divine 



conclusion 355 

quality, does it not follow that if all Christians 
should cease to perceive any divine quality in a 
book, it must be dropped from the Canon ? And 
if these things are fairly implied in the above 
theory of the Canon, are we not left with a very 
uncertain foundation for our Christian faith ? 

It may be confidently affirmed that, the longer 
and the more carefully the whole subject is con- 
sidered, the less serious this objection will seem 
to anybody, while for most Christians it will van- 
ish altogether. 

In the first place, the true foundation of a 
Christian's faith is not a book, but a person. Not 
the New Testament, but Jesus Christ, is the 
corner-stone upon which we are built. Every 
Christian ought to settle that point first of all, 
and, with Paul, know whom (not what) he has 
believed. Jesus himself wrote nothing. If all 
his apostles had done likewise, and several genera- 
tions had passed before the oral gospel was re- 
duced to writing, we should still have had enough 
knowledge of the life and teaching of Jesus to 
make men believers in him. That we should be 
vastly poorer than we are, without the New Tes- 
tament, is true ; that Christianity would have been 
bankrupt without its apostolic writings, is un- 



35^ OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

thinkable. There would still be a Christ of his- 
tory, as well as a Christ of faith, if there had 
never been a New Testament. No man has his 
faith resting on a sure foundation, until he not 
merely assents to this, but fully realizes it. 

Secondly, the Canon must be justified either by 
external or by internal authority. It is not possi- 
ble to justify it on the basis of external authority. 
Catholics can accept the word of the Church that 
these books and no others are canonical, but not 
so Protestants. The word of the Church is worth- 
less to us, save in the way of ordinary historic tes- 
timony. And apostolic authority, in which some 
of us would take refuge, is equally unavailing for 
the justification of our Canon as it exists. A 
canon might be constructed, for which apostolic 
authority might be claimed, but it would not be 
our Canon. Four books, at least, of the present 
Canon were written by men who were not apos- 
tles : the Gospels of Mark and Luke, the Acts, and 
Hebrews. Nor can we be sure that the writers of 
these books did their work under apostolic sanc- 
tion and authority. Even the traditions of the 
second and third centuries that try to establish a 
constructive "apostolic" character for these books, 
do not assert that Mark and Luke wrote with 



conclusion 357 

the actual knowledge of Peter and Paul, or that 
their writings were seen and approved by these 
apostles. Besides these, the first Gospel, in its 
present form, can no longer be maintained to be 
Matthew's, save in the sense that it embodies an 
earlier work on the discourses of our Lord, writ- 
ten in Aramaic by Matthew. Who wrote the 
book in its present form we have not the slightest 
information. Not to dwell on the weak attesta- 
tion of Second Peter as the work of that apostle, 
it is perfectly plain that if apostolicity, in any 
real sense, be made the test of canonicity our 
Canon is hopelessly discredited. 

Thirdly, the subjective test is not " dangerous." 
On the contrary, it is the only safe criterion of 
canonicity. There is no valid a priori objection 
to be urged against post-apostolic inspiration or 
post-apostolic miracle; any objection that may be 
urged to either on a priori grounds will be found 
to be equally valid against all inspiration and all 
miracle. Huxley has conceded, in behalf of 
modern science, that the whole question of in- 
spiration and miracle is not a question of assump- 
tions, pro or con, but a question of fact, to be 
decided by evidence. And the only convincing 
evidence for the inspiration of any book is the 



35$ OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

character of the book, the appeal that it makes di- 
rectly to the spiritually minded reader. The as- 
sertion of Paul that he writes to the church at 
Corinth under the direct impulse of the Spirit 
could never convince anybody that he really was 
inspired, if the message that he delivered did not 
vouch for itself to the reader's soul as coming 
from the same Spirit that had made him a new 
creation. For anybody can assert inspiration. 
Emanuel Swedenborg said that he was inspired, 
but he was undoubtedly deluded. Joseph Smith 
said that he was inspired, but he was undoubtedly 
an impostor. We could not be sure that Paul was 
neither an enthusiast (as some still claim) nor 
an impostor, but for the quality that we perceive, 
by the aid of the Spirit of God, in his writings. 
The Spirit in the believer's heart bears witness 
thus with the Spirit speaking through apostles and 
prophets in the past, and the witness is one. That 
and nothing else works conviction in us that the 
books of the Canon are God's word. 

Fourthly, no Christian need shrink from any 
logical implication of this test. If there were any 
other book in existence that could produce the 
same universal conviction of its divine quality 
that has been produced on the whole Christian 



conclusion 359 

world for nineteen centuries by the canonical 
books, it ought to be in the Canon. And it would 
be — nothing could keep it out. But there is no 
such book; there never has been; we may be 
confident there never will be. Even the " Pil- 
grim's Progress " which every Protestant would 
place next to Scripture, and " The Imitation of 
Christ," which every Catholic and some Protes- 
tants would give a similar place, are only " next." 
Nobody has ever ranked either on the same plane 
with the New Testament. On the other hand, 
should the time ever come when the whole Chris- 
tian world, for successive generations, becomes 
convinced that any book now in the Canon is 
utterly lacking in divine quality and absolutely 
unfitted to instruct or comfort the saints, how 
could such a book be kept in the Canon? But 
what supposition about the future could be more 
wildly improbable than that there will ever be 
such a complete reversal of judgment about any 
canonical book? In a word, then, the objections 
suggested by these logical implications of the sub- 
jective test are purely academic. They have no 
practical force, because they apply to nothing that 
has had place in the history of Christianity, or 
that rational conjecture can suggest for its 



360 OUR NEW TESTAMENT 

future. If the test is no more " dangerous " than 
this, we can afford to smile at the danger. 

Fifthly, after all, whatever objections, theoreti- 
cal or practical, may be made to this subjective 
test, it is the test applied to the New Testament 
by every Christian. Unless a book manifests to 
us its divine quality, we do not receive it as 
Scripture. We do not, because we cannot. What- 
ever we publicly profess to believe about the New 
Testament, only those books are Scripture to our 
hearts that our hearts recognize as such. Why 
not frankly admit this, then, and avow that since 
this subjective test is decisive of real canonicity 
for each of us, it is the true test of formal canon- 
icity for all of us? It is always safe to tell the 
truth. 

And in making this avowal we may be as cer- 
tain as we are of our own existence of this : the 
New Testament will never lose its hold upon 
men's hearts, because to the end of time it will 
speak of Him who came from heaven to give life 
to men, and that they might have it abundantly. 
While there remains on the earth one soul that 
hungers and thirsts after righteousness, he will 
eagerly seek the words of him who spake as 
never man spake, that he may be filled. 



CONCLUSION 361 

Nevertheless, there are some who will not be 
able to accept this theory until they are fully as- 
sured that it is orthodox. I have set it forth in 
this book because I believe it to be something 
better than orthodox — because I believe it to be 
true. But it is, in fact, the orthodoxy regarding 
the Canon. Is anybody more orthodox than John 
Calvin ? It has already been shown at length that 
this is the doctrine of his " Institutes." Does any- 
body fear to accept as sufficiently orthodox the 
teaching of the Philadelphia Confession ? Let us 
hear the conclusion of the whole matter in the 
words of that venerable document : 

We may be moved and induced by the testimony of 
the Church to an high and reverent esteem of the holy 
Scriptures; and the heavenliness of the matter, the 
efficacy of the doctrine, the majesty of the style, the 
consent of all the parts, the scope of the whole {which 
is to give all the glory to God), the full discovery it makes 
of the only way of man's salvation, and many other in- 
comparable excellencies, and entire perfections thereof, are 
arguments whereby it doth abundantly evidence itself to 
be the word of God; yet, notwithstanding, our full per- 
suasion AND ASSURANCE OF THE INFALLIBLE TRUTH, AND 

divine authority thereof, is from the inward work of 
the Holy Spirit, bearing witness by and with the word 
in our hearts. 



APPENDIX 



THE MURATORIAN FRAGMENT 

Translated from the emended text in West- 
cott's " History of the Canon," pp. 543-547. 

... in which things nevertheless he was present, and 
so 1 he placed them. The third book of the Gospel, the 
one according to Luke, that physician « ^) igo (f) 
wrote in his own name, as it seemed good 
to him, after the ascension of Christ, when Paul had as- 
sociated him with himself as an assistant studious of 
the law — nevertheless he did not see the Lord in the 
flesh — and accomplished the same as he was able. So 
also John, one of the disciples, [author of the] fourth of 
the Gospels, began to write from the birth of John [the 
Baptist]. At the entreaties of his fellow-disciples and 
bishops, he said, " Fast with me for three days from 
this, and whatever shall be revealed to us, let us narrate 
it to each other." On the same night it was revealed 
to Andrew, one of the apostles, that John should relate 
all things in his own name, while all revised them. And 
so, while different ideas are taught in the various books 
of the Gospels, yet there is no difference in the faith 
of believers, since in all everything is declared by one 
superintending Spirit, concerning the birth, passion, 
resurrection, conversation with his disciples, and his 

1 The meaning probably is that Mark arranged the material of 
his Gospel in the order indicated by Peter, who was participant in the 
events narrated. 

365 



3^6 APPENDIX 

twofold advent: the first in the humiliation of con- 
tempt, which is past; the second in the glory of royal 
power, which is to come. What wonder then that John 
so continually brings forward phrases, even in his 
epistles, saying in his own person, " What we have seen 
with our eyes, and heard with our ears, and handled 
with our hands — these things have we written." For he 
thus professes that he was not only an eye-witness but 
also a hearer, and besides a writer in their order of all 
the wonderful works of the Lord. Moreover, the Acts 
of all the apostles were written in one book. Luke 
narrated [this] to the most excellent Theophilus, be- 
cause the various events took place in his presence, as 
he shows by omitting the martyrdom of Peter and the 
journey of Paul, when he went from the city [of Rome] 
to Spain. 1 Then as to the Epistles of Paul, they them- 
selves declare to those who are willing to understand, 
from what place and for what reason they were sent. 
First of all he wrote to the Corinthians, to check heret- 
ical schism; then to the Galatians, forbidding circum- 
cision; then at greater length to the Romans, on the 
rule of the Scriptures, 2 and also to show that Christ is 
the Head of these, which it is needful for us to discuss 
in detail. 3 For the blessed Apostle Paul himself, follow- 
ing the example of his predecessor, John, wrote by 
name to seven churches only: first to the Corinthians, 
second to the Ephesians, third to the Philippians, fourth 
to the Colossians, fifth to the Galatians, sixth to the 
Thessalonians, seventh to the Romans. Moreover, 
though he wrote a second time to the Corinthians and 
Thessalonians for their correction, it is nevertheless 

1 The text is hopelessly corrupt here, and only by heroic emen- 
dation can any sense whatever be extracted from it. The above is 
the probable meaning. 

2 We are to understand the Old Testament here. 

3 In the treatise of which this is a fragment. 



APPENDIX 367 

shown that one church is spread abroad through the 
whole world, And John too, in the Apocalypse, though 
he writes to seven churches, nevertheless speaks to all. 
Besides [he wrote] one [letter] to Philemon, and one 
to Titus, and two [letters] to Timothy, from affection 
and love; which are nevertheless 1 hallowed in the es- 
teem of the Catholic Church and in the ordering of 
ecclesiastical discipline. There are also in circulation 
a letter to the Laodiceans, another to the Alexandrines, 
forged under Paul's name against the heresy of Mar- 
cion; and several others that cannot be received into 
the Catholic Church, for it is not fitting to mix gall 
with honey. The Epistle of Jude, however, and two of 
the above-named John, are received in the Catholic 
[Church]; 2 and the Book of Wisdom, written by the 
friends of Solomon in his honor. We receive also the 
Apocalypses of John and Peter, although some among 
us are unwilling to have [the latter] 3 read in the 
Church. The Shepherd, moreover, Hermas very re- 
cently wrote in the city of Rome, in our own times, 
while his brother Pius was occupying the chair of the 
Roman Church, and so it is fitting that it should be 
read, indeed, but not publicly in church, neither among 
the prophets, whose number is complete, nor among 
the apostles to the end of time. But we receive noth- 
ing at all of the writings of Arsinous, or of Valentinus, 
or of Miltiades. Those also who wrote the new book 
of Psalms for Marcion, together with Basilides, founder 
of the Asiatic Cataphrygians. . . 



1 The idea probably is: in spite of their being addressed merely to 
individuals, they have been received as Scripture by the Church. 

2 Or, the meaning may be, " among the catholic epistles." 

3 This is the translation favored by most, though the text would 
better bear the rendering: "to have [them] read," thus making both 
Apocalypses doubtful. 






368 APPENDIX 

II 

THE CANON OF EUSEBIUS 

From his " Ecclesiastical History," bk. iii., 
chap. 25. 2PNF I : 155. 

Since we are dealing with this subject, it is proper 
to sum up the writings of the New Testament that 
B. 5). 324 nave already been mentioned. First 
then must be put the holy quaternion 
of the Gospels; following them the Acts of the Apos- 
tles. After this must be reckoned the Epistles of Paul; 
next in order the extant former Epistle of John and 
likewise the Epistle of Peter, must be maintained. 
After them is to be placed, if it really seem proper, the 
Apocalypse of John, concerning which we shall give 
the different opinions at the proper time. These then 
belong among the accepted writings (Homologoumena) . 
Among the disputed writings (Antilegomena) which are 
nevertheless recognized by many, are extant the so- 
called Epistle of James and that of Jude, also the 
second Epistle of Peter, and those that are called the 
second and third of John, whether they belong to the 
evangelist or to another person of the same name. 
Among the rejected writings (Notha) must be reckoned 
also the Acts of Paul, and the so-called Shepherd, and 
the Apocalypse of Peter, and in addition to these the 
extant Epistle of Barnabas, and the so-called Teachings 
of the Apostles; and besides, as I said, the Apocalypse 
of John, if it seem proper, which some, as I said, reject, 
but which others class with the accepted books. And 
among these some have placed also the Gospel ac- 



APPENDIX 369 

cording to the Hebrews, with which those of the 
Hebrews that have accepted Christ are especially de- 
lighted. And all these may be reckoned among the 
disputed books. But we have nevertheless felt com- 
pelled to give a catalogue of those also, distinguish- 
ing these works which, according to ecclesiastical tra- 
dition are true and genuine and commonly accepted, 
from those others which, although not canonical but 
disputed, are yet known to ecclesiastical writers — we 
have felt compelled to give this catalogue in order that 
we might be able to know both these works and those 
that are cited by the heretics under the name of the 
apostles, including for instance, such books as the 
Gospels of Peter, of Thomas, of Matthias, or of any 
other besides them, and the Acts of Andrew and John 
and the other apostles, which no one belonging to the 
succession of ecclesiastical writers has deemed worthy 
of mention in his writings. And further, the character 
of the style is at variance with apostolic usage, and 
both the thoughts and the purpose of the things that 
are related in them are so completely out of accord 
with true orthodoxy that they clearly show themselves 
to be the fictions of heretics. Wherefore they are not to 
be placed even among the rejected writings, but all of 
them are to be cast aside as absurd and impious. 



Ill 
THE CANON OF CYRIL OF JERUSALEM 

From his " Catechetical Lectures." 2PNF 
VII : 27, 28. 



37° APPENDIX 

Then of the New Testament there are the four Gos- 
pels only, for the rest have false titles and are mis- 
21 D 350 chievous. The Manichaeans also wrote 
a Gospel according to Thomas, which 
being tinctured with the fragrance of the evangelic 
title corrupts the souls of the simple sort. Receive also 
the Acts of the Twelve Apostles; and in addition to 
these the seven Catholic Epistles of James, Peter, John, 
and Jude; and as a seal upon them all, and the last 
work of the disciples, the fourteen Epistles of Paul. 
But let the rest be put aside in a secondary rank. And 
whatever books are not read in the churches, these read 
not even by thyself, as thou hast heard me say. 



IV 

THE CANON OF LAODICEA 



2PNF XIV : 158, 159. 

Can. 59. No private psalms nor any uncanonical 
books may be read in the church, but only the canoni- 

S © ^6^ ca ^ DO °k s °f the Old and New Testa- 
ments. [And these are the books of the 
New Testament: four Gospels, according to Matthew, 
Mark, Luke, and John; the Acts of the Apostles; seven 
Catholic Epistles; to wit, one of James, two of Peter, 
three of John, one of Jude; fourteen Epistles of Paul, 
one to the Romans, two to the Corinthians, one to the 
Galatians, one to the Ephesians, one to the Philippians, 
one to the Colossians, two to the Thessalonians, one to 
thtj Hebrews, two to Timothy, one to Titus, and one to 
Philemon.] 



APPENDIX 371 

V 

THE CANON OF ATHANASIUS 

From his Festal Letters, No. XXXIX, a. d. 
367. Migne, XXVI. 2PNF II : 551 seq. 

I shall adopt, to commend my undertaking, the pat- 
tern of Luke the evangelist, saying on my own account: 
" Forasmuch as some have taken in «w 5) 057 
hand " to reduce into order for them- 
selves the books termed apocryphal, and to mix them up 
with the divinely inspired Scripture, concerning which 
we have been fully persuaded, as they who were from 
the beginning eye-witnesses and ministers of the Word, 
delivered to the Fathers; it seemed good to me also, 
having been urged thereto by true brethren, and having 
learned from the beginning, to set before you the books 
included in the Canon, and handed down and accredited 
as divine; to the end that any one who has fallen into 
error may condemn those who have led him astray; 
and that he who has continued stedfast in purity may 
again rejoice, having these things brought to his re- 
membrance. 

Again, it is not tedious to speak of the [books of the] 
New Testament. These are, the four Gospels; accord- 
ing to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Afterwards, the 
Acts of the Apostles, and Epistles called Catholic, 
seven: viz., of James, one; of Peter, two; of John, 
three; after these, one of Jude. In addition there are 
fourteen Epistles of Paul, written in this order: the 
first, to the Romans; then two, to the Corinthians; 
after these, to the Galatians; next, to the Ephesians; 



37 2 APPENDIX 

then to the Philippians; then to the Colossians; after 
these, two to the Thessalonians, and that to the He- 
brews; and again, two to Timothy; one to Titus; and 
lastly, that to Philemon. And besides, the Revelation 
of John. 

But for greater exactness I add this also, writing of 
necessity: that there are other books besides these, 
not indeed included in the Canon, but appointed by the 
Fathers to be read by those who newly join us, and who 
wish for instruction in the word of godliness: the 
Wisdom of Solomon, and the Wisdom of Sirach, and 
Esther, and Judith, and Tobit, and that which is called 
the Teaching of the Apostles, and the Shepherd. But 
the former, my brethren, are included in the Canon, the 
latter being [merely] read; nor is there in any place a 
mention of apocryphal writings. But they are an in- 
vention of heretics, who write them when they choose, 
bestowing upon them their approbation, and assigning 
to them a date, that so, using them as ancient writings, 
they may find occasion to lead astray the simple. 



VI 

THE CANON OF THE " 

Compiled in the latter half of the fourth cen- 
tury. Text from ANF VII : 505. 

Can. 85. Let the following books be esteemed vener- 
able and holy by you, both of the clergy and laity. . . 
-a -h\ f7c tt\ Our sacred books, that is, those of the 
New Covenant* are these: the four 
Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John; the four- 
teen Epistles of Paul; two Epistles of Peter; three of 



APPENDIX $J$ 

John; one of James, one of Jude; two Epistles of Clem- 
ent; and the Constitutions dedicated to you, the bishops, 
by me, Clement, in eight books; which it is not fit to 
publish before all, because of the mysteries contained in 
them; and the Acts of us, the Apostles. 



VII 

THE CANON OF AMPHILOCHIUS 

This Canon, ratified by the Trullan Council, is 
in iambic verse ; the lines, but not the rhythm, of 
the original are preserved. From Migne, Patrol. 
Gr. XXXVII : 1593. 

2L2>.380 

Name to me now the books of the New Testament: 

Receive only four Gospels, 

Matthew, then Mark, to which Luke 

Being added numbers three, and John, in time 

Fourth, but first in height of doctrine; 

For having known this son of thunder I call 

Him greatest in sounding the word of God. 

And receive also the second book of Luke, 

The general Acts of the Apostles, 

Add next the vessel of honor, 

The preacher of the Gentiles, the apostle 

Paul, writing wisely to the churches 

Fourteen letters. . . 

Some say that to the Hebrews is spurious, 

Not speaking wisely, for the grace is genuine. 



374 APPENDIX 

See, what remains? of the Catholic Epistles 
Some say there are seven, while only three 
Should be received, say others: James one, 
One of Peter and one of John; but some 
Three of his, and besides these two 
Of Peter receive, and Jude the seventh. 
The Apocalypse of John again 
Some approve, but the most 
Say it is spurious. 



VIII 

THE CANON OF GREGORY OF NAZIANZEN 

This is from the Father's Poems, and is in 
iambic verse, like the preceding. From Migne, 
Patrol. Gr. XXXVIII : 842. 

». 2). 391 

But now number also the new Mystery: 

Matthew indeed wrote for the Hebrews the wonderful 

works of Christ, 
And Mark for Italy, Luke for Greece, 
John, the great preacher, for all, walking in heaven. 
Then the acts of the wise apostles, 
And fourteen Epistles of Paul, 

And seven Catholic [Epistles], of which James is one, 
Two of Peter, three of John again. 
Jude is the seventh. You have all. 
If there is any beyond these, it is not among the 

genuine. 



APPENDIX 375 

IX 

THE CANON OF JEROME 

From Letter LIII, Ad Paulinum. 2PNF VI : 
101, 102. 

The New Testament I will briefly deal with. Mat- 
thew, Mark, Luke, and John are the Lord's team of four, 
the true cherubim or store of knowl- « ^ 304 
edge. . . The Apostle Paul writes to 
seven churches (for the eighth epistle — that to the 
Hebrews — is not generally counted in with the others). 
He instructs Timothy and Titus; he intercedes with 
Philemon for his runaway slave. Of him I think it better 
to say nothing than to write inadequately. The Acts of 
the Apostles seem to relate a mere unvarnished narrative 
descriptive of the infancy of the newly born church; but 
when we once realize that their author is Luke the phy- 
sician, whose praise is in the gospel, we shall see that all 
his words are medicine for the sick soul. The apostles, 
James, Peter, John, and Jude, have published seven 
epistles at once spiritual and to the point, short and 
long, short that is in words but lengthy in substance, so 
that there are few indeed who do not find themselves 
in the dark when they read them. The Apocalypse of 
John has as many mysteries as words. In saying this 
I have said less than the book deserves. All praise of it 
is inadequate; manifold meanings lie hid in its every 
word. 



3^6 APPENDIX 



THE CANON OF CARTHAGE 

Mansi, III. 891. 2PNF XIV : 453, 454. 

Can. 39. Besides the canonical Scriptures, nothing 
shall be read in church under the name of divine Scrip- 
ture. But the canonical Scriptures are as follows. . . 
The New Testament: the Gospels, four books; the Acts 
of the Apostles, one book; the Epistles of Paul, fourteen; 
the Epistles of Peter the apostle, two; the Epistles of 
John the apostle, three; the Epistle of James the apostle, 
one; the Epistle of Jude the apostle, one; the Revelation 
of John, one book. Let this be sent to our brother and 
fellow-bishop, Boniface [of Rome], and to the other 
bishops of those parts, that they may confirm this 
canon, for these are the things that we have received 
from our fathers to be read in church. 



XI 

THE CANON OF AUGUSTINE 

From his treatise " On Christian Doctrine," 
bk. ii., chap. 8. PNF II : 538. 

Now the whole Canon of Scripture on which we say 
this judgment is to be exercised, is contained in the 

21 D 397 following books [we omit his catalogue 
of forty-four books of the Old Testa- 
ment]. . . That of the New Testament, again, is con- 
tained within the following: four books of the Gospel, 



APPENDIX 377 

according to Matthew, according to Mark, according 
to Luke, according to John; fourteen Epistles of the 
Apostle Paul — one to the Romans, two to the Corin- 
thians, one to the Galatians, to the Ephesians, to the 
Philippians, two to the Thessalonians, one to the Colos- 
sians, two to Timothy, one to Titus, to Philemon, to the 
Hebrews; two of Peter, three of John; one of Jude; 
and one of James; one book of the Acts of the Apos- 
tles; and one of the Revelation of John. 



XII 

THE CANON OF RUFINUS 

. From his Commentary on the Apostles' Creed, 
2PNF III : 558. 

Of the New [Testament] there are four Gospels, 
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John; the Acts of the 
Apostles, written by Luke; fourteen *. ^) oog n\ 
Epistles of the Apostle Paul, two of the 
Apostle Peter, one of James, brother of the Lord and 
apostle, one of Jude, three of John, the Revelation of 
John. These are the books that the Fathers have com- 
prised within the Canon, and from which they would 
have us deduce the proofs of our faith. 

But it should be known that there are also other books 
which our fathers call not " canonical " but " ecclesiasti- 
cal "... in the New Testament, the little book that 
is called the book of the Pastor of Hermas, [and that] 
which is called the Two Ways, or the Judgment of 
Peter; all of which they would have read in the 
churches, but not appealed to for the confirmation of 
doctrine. The other writings they have named Apocry- 
pha. These they would not have read in the churches. 



3?8 APPENDIX 

XIII 
LIST OF THE CODEX ALEXANDRINUS 

The New Testament. 

B. 2>. 400 (?) 

Gospels, four. 

According to Matthew. 

According to Mark. 

According to Luke. 

According to John. 
Acts of the Apostles. 
Catholic Epistles, seven. 
Epistles of Paul, fourteen. 
Apocalypse of John. 
First Epistle of Clement. 
Second Epistle of Clement. 

XIV 

THE CANON OF POPE INNOCENT I 

Translated from the Latin text in Westcott, p. 
582. 

The New Testament: Four books of the Gospels; 
fourteen Epistles of Paul; three Epistles of John; two 

B ID 405 Epistles of Peter; the Epistle of Jude; 

the Epistle of James; the Acts of the 

Apostles; the Apocalypse of John. But the rest, either 

under the name of Matthias, or of James the Less, or 



APPENDIX 



379 



under the name of Peter and John, which were written 
by a certain Leucius, or under the name of Andrew, 
which were written by the philosophers Nexocharidis 
and Leonidas, or under the name of Thomas, and any 
others there may be, you know should not only be re- 
pudiated but also condemned. 



XV 

THE CANON OF POPE GELASIUS 

Translated from the Latin text in Westcott, p. 
584. 

Likewise the order of the Scriptures of the New 
Testament, which the Holy Roman Catholic Church 
21 © 496 (7) re ceives and venerates: Four books of 
the Gospels; that is, Matthew, one 
book; Mark, one book; Luke, one book; John, one 
book. Likewise the Acts of the Apostles, one book. 
The Epistles of Paul, in number fourteen; the Apoca- 
lypse, one book; Apostolic Epistles, in number seven; 
of Peter the apostle, in number two; of James the 
apostle, in number one; of John the apostle, in number 
three; of Jude the Zealot, [in number one]. 



XVI 

THE RATIFICATION OF THE TRULLAN COUNCIL 

Held as the Seventh Ecumenical Council, but 
repudiated in the West. Text from 2PNF XIV : 
361. 



380 APPENDIX 

Canon ii. It has also seemed good to this holy Coun- 
cil, that the eighty-five canons, received and ratified 

B» ID 692 k y tne h°lv and blessed Fathers before 
us, and also handed down in the name 
of the holy and glorious apostles, should from this 
time forth remain firm and unshaken for the cure of 
souls and the healing of disorders. . . We set our seal 
likewise upon all the other holy canons set forth by our 
blessed Fathers, that is . . . those too at Laodicea. . . 
Likewise too the canons [t. e., the decretal letters] of 
. . . Athanasius ... of Amphilochius of Iconium . . . 
of Gregory Theologus [Nazianzen]. 



XVII 

THE CANON OF POPE EUGENlUS IV 

From his Decretum pro Jacobinis; from Har- 
douin's Councils, IX. 1023, 1024. 

[The Holy Roman Church] most firmly believes, pro- 
fesses, and declares that one true God, Father, Son, and 

« D 1441 Holy Spirit, is the Creator of all things, 
visible and invisible. . . She professes 
that one and the same God is the author of Old and 
New Testaments; that is, of the law and prophets, and 
of the Gospels, since both Testaments were spoken 
under the inspiration of the same Holy Spirit, the 
books of which she received and venerates as contained 
under the following titles . . . four Gospels: Mat- 
thew, Mark, Luke, John; fourteen Epistles of Paul: 
Romans, two to the Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, 
Philippians, Colossians, two to the Thessalonians, two 
to Timothy, Titus, Philemon, Hebrews; two of Peter, 
three of John, James, Jude; the Acts of the Apostles, 
and the Apocalypse of John. 



INDEX 



Abbot, Doctor Ezra, 81. 

Acts of the Apostles: its canon- 
icity, 88, 146, 147, 152, 175, 
I 77, 356; rejected by Encra- 
tites, 132; in Provisional 
Canon, 137; an anonymous 
book, 313. 

Acts of Andrew and John, 209, 
369. 

Acts of Paul, 210, 220, 237, 287. 

Acts of Peter, 209, 311. 

Alexandria, influence of, on 
formation of Canon, 205, 343- 
345- 

Alogi, reject Johannine writings, 
130, 131. 

Amphilochius, Canon of, 265, 
373- 

Anthony, and Coptic versions, 
294. 

Antilegomena, and Alexandria, 
205, 307. 

Apocalypse : and Montanists, 
126; in the East, 128; in the 
West, 129; omitted in Canon 
of Laodicea, 259; not in Syr- 
ian Canon, 289; not in Coptic 
versions, 295, 296; Alexandria 
accepts, 345; cited, 33, 99, 
130, 143, 145, 152, 175, 233, 
237, 268, 287. 

Apocalypse of Peter, question of 
its canonicity, 152, 201, 209, 
231-233, 237, 311. 

Apocrypha: Irenaeus on, 138; 
the O. T., 268. 

Apollinaris, 140. 

Apostles, authority of, 26, 27, 
339- 



Apostolicon, Marcion's, 107, 109, 
in. 

Apostolicity: modified sense of, 
182, 313 seq., 356, 357. 

Apostolic Canons, 372. 

Aristides, 249. 

Aristotle, spurious letters of, 65. 

Asceticism: of Marcion, 102; of 
the Encratites, 132. 

Athanasius: on Hebrews, 179; 
Festal Letter of, 167, 260, 308, 
371; his Canon, 371, 372; 
cited, 28, 81, 129, 191, 198, 
203, 205, 265, 283, 345. 

Athenagoras: on inspiration, 51; 
a layman, 249. 

Augustine: at synod of Car- 
thage, 261, 309, 310; on the 
Latin versions, 292; Canon of, 
376; cited, 28, 191, 205, 345. 

Baptism, Justin on, 80. 

Barnabas (apostle) : opposed by 
Paul, 106; alleged author of 
Hebrews, 180. 

Barnabas (epistle): date and 
author of, 42; first quotes 
Gospels as " Scripture," ibid.; 
relation to James, 188; char- 
acter of, discussed, 288-231; 
its absurd exegesis, 353; cited, 
88, 90, 122, 180, 209, 237, 
278, 283, 319, 342. 

Basil: does not quote Apocalypse, 
34; his quotations of Scrip- 
ture, 81; accepts Hebrews, 
180. 

Basilides, 99. 

Belgic Confession, 270, 331. 

381 



3^2 



INDEX 



Bessarion, Cardinal, 280. 
Bishops and the Canon, 190, 247 

seq., 346. 
Boniface, bishop of Rome, 263, 

376. 
Bryennios, publishes the Di- 

dache, 224. 
Bunyan and the " Pilgrim's 

Progress," 334, 359. 

Calvin: on the Canon, 327 seq.; 
on the Apocalypse, 345. 

Cassiodorus, 198. 

Catalogus Claromontanus, 231. 

Canon: importance of the ques- 
tion, 6-10; defined, 12, 13; 
writers on, 16; hypotheses con- 
cerning, 17; did Rome make 
it? 28, 165-167, 344-346; ger- 
minal idea of, 47; a product 
of the Catholic Church, 57; 
influence of heresy on, 95 seq., 
132, 133, 171, 34i; the Pro- 
visional, 108, 137, 142 seq., 
342; its "sudden" appear- 
ance, 139; progress of, in 
third century, 171 seq.; Euse- 
bius on, 175, 368; the Momm- 
senianus, 198; a "closed," 
120, 205, 350; influence of 
Alexandria on, 205, 343-345 ; 
a result of winnowing, 209, 
351; the Claromontanus, 237; 
books rejected from, 210 seq.; 
part of an orderly develop- 
ment, 257; the Laodicean, 258 
seq.; Athanasius on, 260, 261; 
synod of Carthage on, 261 seq., 
310, 347, 365; Reformation and, 
263, 326 seq.; Trullan Coun- 
cil on, 264, 380; Innocent the 
Pope on, 265-267; finally es- 
tablished, 268; in the MSS, 
279-284; in the versions, 292- 
298; Erasmus on, 322; Luther 
on, 6, 7, 323-326; Calvin on, 
327 seq.; every believer's pri- 
vate, 333; the real, 334; why 



Protestants accept the, 347; 
Reformers on, 348; Jiilicher 
on, 351; should any book be 
added to? 352; should any be 
rejected from? 353; objection 
to theory of, 354; apostolicity 
as criterion of, 356, cf. 313 
seq.; subjective tests of, 317- 
3 22 » 357-36o; orthodox theory 
of, 361; in Alexandrine Co- 
dex, 378. 

Canon of O. T., 21, 41, 152, 
199, 337- 

Canonicity: a matter of usage, 
243, 287, 321, 305; Jerome 
and, 299; Fathers on, 306-310; 
apostolicity and, 182, 313 seq., 
356, 357; ideas of Reformers 
on, 322 seq.; edification a test 
of, 317-322; consensus of 
Christian experience on, 330 
seq., 346, 349- 

Carthage, synod of, 261, 310, 
347, 376. 

Cerinthus, the Gnostic, 98, 127, 
129, 130, 131. 

Christ: authority of, 30-38, 338; 
opposed to Marcion's ideas, 
106; the foundation of our 
faith, 355. 

Chiliasm in the early church, 122. 

Chillingworth on the Bible, 4. 

Chrysostom: on the Canon, 81, 
128, 180, 191, 197; and limits 
of episcopal authority, 257. 

Cicero, letters of, 65. 

Clement (of Rome) : and apos- 
tolic writings, 30; letter of, 
to Corinthians, 65-67, 89, 98; 
his epistles cited, 141, 156, 
209, 214, 225-228, 319, 340, 
342, 352. 

Clement (of Alexandria) : on 
inspiration, 51; testimony to 
Provisional Canon, 143 seq.; 
on Hebrews, 176; on Jude, 
196; on Barnabas, 229; on the 
Shepherd, 235; on the Apoca- 



INDEX 



383 



lypse, 295; writings cited, 205, 
217, 223, 225, 249, 311. 

Clergy, influence of, 256, 257. 

Constantine: his attitude to 
Christianity, 273; his gift of 
Scriptures, 274. 

Councils: Carthage, 261 seq., 
310, 347, 376; Laodicea, 258 
seq., 263, 347, 370; Trent, 
268, 347; Trullan, 264, 265, 
380. 

Curetonian version, 288. 

Cybele, 113. 

Cyprian: on authority of Scrip- 
ture, 172; ignores Hebrews, 
181; rebukes presbyters, 248; 
cited, 29, 195, 203. 

Cyril (Alexandria), 180. 

Cyril (Jerusalem) : on Canon, 
127, 180, 195, 198, 203, 224, 
283, 345, 370. 

Dante, his Divine Comedy: and 
the Shepherd, 239; and the 
Apocalypse of Peter, 232. 

Demiurge, Marcion's idea of, 
102. 

Diatessaron, Tatian's, 251. 

Didache: value of, 59; its 
quotations from Gospels, 34- 
36, 43, 340; relation of, to 
James, 188; among the Notha, 
209; its relation to the Canon, 
223-225. 

Didymus, his testimony to 
Canon, 180, 191, 197, 205. 

Diocletian, persecution of, 87. 

Diognetus, epistle to, 70, 90. 

Dionysius (Corinth), letter to 
Romans, 67. 

Dionysius (the Great), 127, 128, 
194, 3"- 

Docetism: of Cerinthus, 131; in 
Gospel of Peter, 213, 250. 

Ebionites, and Gospel accord- 
ing to Hebrews, 217. 
Eck, of Ingolstadt, 3. 



Eddy, Mrs., 119. 

Empedocles, philosophy of, 101. 

Encratites, the, 131. 

Enoch, book of: Tertullian on, 
198, 318; canonicity of, 199. 

Epiphanius, on Canon, 98, 100, 
124, 130, 180, 191. 

Epistles, Pauline: quoted by 
Clement of Rome, 32; the first 
Christian literature, 60: col- 
lections of, 64, 66; public read- 
ing of, 61, 67, 339; rejected 
by Encratites, 132; in Pro- 
visional Canon, 137; attested 
by Clement of Alexandria, 
143; accepted by Marcion, 
341; Cited, 99, 105, 107, 146, 
148, 152, 175, 286; First Cor- 
inthians, 37, 98, 334; Ephe- 
sians, 37, 63; Philippians, 63, 
65; Colossians, 62; Thessa- 
lonians, 62, 291; Timothy, 
107; Titus, 107, 291; Phile- 
mon, 107, 286. 

Epistles, Catholic: and Alexan- 
drine Fathers, 205; canonicity 
of, 343, 344; First Peter: gen- 
erally accepted, 85, 91; in 
Provisional Canon, 137; Euse- 
bius on, 311; cited, 111, 143, 
145, 146, 148, 175, 334; 
Second Peter: date of, 84; 
Harnack on, 200 seq.; early 
Fathers on, ibid.; Clement of 
Alexandria and later Fathers, 
202 seq.; alleged pseudony 
mous character of, 222, 223 
Tertullian on, 318; cited, 125 
166, 175, 228, 268, 291, 325 
344, 357J First John: gener 
ally accepted, 85, 91; in Pro 
visional Canon, 137; cited, 32 
36, in, 145, 146, 152, 175 
334; Second and Third John 
doubts concerning, 192; East 
ern Fathers on, 193; Mura 
torian Fragment on, 194 
cited, 166, 175, 344, 353 



3*4 



INDEX 



James: rejected by Luther, 7, 
325; not canonical until fourth 
century, 13; Jiilicher on, 183- 
185; Harnack on, 184; Spitta 
on, 185; why recognition of 
was delayed, 189; Fathers 
quote, 190, 191; cited, 25, 145, 
152, 175, 268, 289, 291, 292, 
293. 325, 344; Jude: in the 
Apostolic Fathers, 195; in 
later Fathers, 187, 198; its 
delayed canonization, 198-200; 
cited, 145, 152, 175, 324, 325, 
344, 353- 

Erasmus on canonicity, 322, 323. 

Eugenius IV on Canon, 380. 

Eusebius: on Canon, 175, 209, 
368; on Jude, 197; on First 
Clement, 226; on Barnabas, 
229; on Apocalypse of Peter, 
231; on Shepherd, 236; makes 
copies of Scriptures, 274; his 
Notha, 287, 307; on canonicity, 
307; on First Peter, 311; on 
Luke, 315; quoted, 67, 68, 
81, 123, 127, 132, 144, 158, 
193, 194. 

Evangelicon, Marcion's, 107, 109, 
in. 

Festal Letter, see " Athanasius." 

Gaius: on inspiration, 50; heresy 
of, 130--. and the Roman 
Church, 157, 158; on He- 
brews, 159. 

Gallican Confession, 270, 331. 

Gelasius on Canon, 266, 379. 

God, Marcion's doctrine of, 102, 
103. 

Gospels: quoted by Clement of 
Rome, 30; in the Didache, 34- 
36; quoted by Didymus, 37; 
by Irenaeus, 45; collections of, 
68 seq., 175, 284, 286; in 
Provisional Canon, 137; tes- 
timony of Apollinaris, 140; 
acceptance of a test of or- 



thodoxy, 140; Justin's testi- 
mony to, 340; Matthew: used 
by Justin, 77; by heretics, 98; 
relation to Gospel to Hebrews, 
217; cited, 31, 34, 42, 43, 99, 
146, 357; Mark, 31, 356; 
Luke: dedication of, 61; used 
by Justin, 77; relations of to 
Acts, 88; Marcion accepts, 
107, 341; cited, 31, 34, 43, 
99, 147, 357; John: its Logos 
doctrine, 78; Heracleon's com- 
mentary on, 99; cited, 35, 52, 
53, 98, 99, 127, 130, 146, 147, 
152, 334- 

Gospel according to the Egyp- 
tians, 214, 215. 

Gospel according to the He- 
brews, 209, 215-218. 

Gospel of the Infancy, 209. 

Gospel of Matthias, 209, 369. 

Gospel of the Nazarenes, 39. 

Gospel of Nicodemus, 13, 209. 

Gospel of Peter, 59, 211-214, 
250, 3", 369. 

Gospel of Thomas, 209, 369. 

Gregory, Caspar Rene, on lan- 
guage of Roman Church, 55. 

Gregory the Great, and the Vul- 
gate, 297. 

Gregory of Nazianzen, 180, 203, 
205, 374. 

Gregory of Nyssa, 81, 180. 

Greek, language of the Roman 
Church, 155-161. 

Harnack: on Justin Martyr, 82; 
on formation of Canon, n 1; 
its "sudden" appearance, 139; 
on testimony of Clement of 
Alexandria, 145; on James, 
184; on Second Peter, 200, 
201; on Zahn, 205. 

Hebrews, Epistle to: to whom 
addressed, 176; Canonicity of, 
176 seq.; Fathers on, 176-179; 
compared with Epistle of Bar- 
3, 230; cited, 13, 32, 99, 



INDEX 



385 



125, 145, 152, 166, 204, 205, 
228, 286, 289, 291, 292, 307, 
312. 313, 315, 325, 344, 356. 

Hegesippus, relation to Rome, 
157. 

Heracleon, commentary on John, 
52. 

Heresies, in Apostolic age, 95; 
Ophite, 98; effect on Canon, 
132, 34i. 

Hermas, author of the Shep- 
herd, 233, 317. 

Hippolytus, 81, 100, 101, 174. 

Homologoumena, the, of Euse- 
bius, 307, 368. 

Hypotyposes, the, of Clement, 
229. 

Ignatius: genuine Epistles of, 
36; his citations of Scripture, 
37, 43; on authority of N. T., 
381; letters of, 64-69; on the 
episcopate, 247; cited, 29, 89, 
121, 225. 

Imitation of Christ, the, 334, 
359. 

Innocent I, on the Canon, 265, 
345, 378. 

Inspiration: Justin on, 48; 
other Fathers on, 49-51; Cath- 
olic idea of, 117, 119; early 
belief in, 340; convincing evi- 
dence of, 358. 

Instrument, the Apostolic, 99, 
no; see "New Testament." 

Irenaeus: on authority of Scrip- 
ture, 44-47; on inspiration, 49; 
against Heresies, 89; on the 
Apocrypha, 138; his use of 
Greek, 156, 157; on First 
Clement, 226; on the Shep- 
herd, 234; on presbyters, 248, 
306; on Provisional Canon, 
243, 342; cited, 99, 100, in, 
112, 121, 122, 130, 131, 132, 
137, 139, Mi, 143, 3"- 

Jerome: on Hebrews, 179; on 
Z 



Second Peter, 204; on Gospel 
to Hebrews, 216; on Barnabas, 
229; his Vulgate, 268; on 
Latin versions, 292; his Il- 
lustrious Men, 298; his influ- 
ence on the Canon, 299, 375; 
cited, 167, 191, 205, 249, 312, 
345- 

Jesus: see " Christ." 

Johannine writings, 130, 131; see 
also ' Gospels " and " Epis- 
tles." 

Joseph of Arimathea, 212. 

Judgment of Peter, 224. 

Julicher: on James, 183-185; on 
Second Peter, 200; on the 
growth of the Canon, 351. 

Justin (Martyr) : apologies of, 
43; on inspiration, 48; on the 
" gospel," 70; on the " Mem- 
oirs," 71, 306, 314; his quo- 
tations from the Septuagint, 
71-73; from the Gospels, 73- 
77; his use of the fourth 
Gospel, 78-82; his account of 
Christian worship, 83, 340; 
his knowledge of the Pauline 
epistles, 91; a layman, 249; 
cited, 90, 108, 123, 139, 140, 
312. 

Lactantius: quotes James, 191; a 
layman, 249. 

Laodicea, synod of, 258 seq., 
347, 370. 

Laodiceans, Epistle to, 62. 

Laymen of the early church, 249, 
257. 

Liberty, Christian, in the Paul- 
ine Epistles, 132. 

Literature, Christian: the Epis- 
tles the earliest, 59; Ramsay 
on, 60; alleged lost treasures 
of, 5- 

Logos doctrine of Philo, 79. 

Luke, alleged author of Hebrews, 
176 seq.; Gospel of, see " Gos- 
pels." 



3 86 



INDEX 



Luther: at Leipzig, 3; on the 
Canon, 6, 323-326, 334, 345. 

Manuscripts, New Testament: Si- 
naitic, 276 seq,; Vatican, 279 
seq.; Alexandrine, 282; Eph- 
raem, 283; Bezae, 284; Claro- 
montanus, 286. 

Marcion: events in his life, 99; 
a Gnostic, 101; his philosophy, 
102; theology of, 103; idea 
of law and Gospel, 104; Ne- 
ander's opinion of, 105; his 
Canon, 106 seq., no, 148, 
341; his two gods, 149. 

Marcosians, their apocryphal 
writings, 138. 

Maximilla, 114. 

Messiah, Marcion's doctrine of, 
103. 

Montanism: origin and nature 
of, 112; its prophets, 114; 
Tertullian on, 115, 116; Catho- 
lic opposition to, 117 seq.; its 
chiliasm, 122 seq.; its rela- 
tion to the Apocalypse, 126; 
its influence on the Canon, 
342. 

Muratorian Fragment : how wide- 
ly accepted, 85; agrees with 
Tertullian, 143; discovery of, 
150; its date, 151; testimony 
of, to Provisional Canon, 152; 
object of its list, 153, 154; 
origin, 155 seq.; omits James, 
191; cited, 198, 231, 234, 306, 
317, 342, 365-367. 

Neander, on Marcion, 105. 
New Testament: name first used 

by Clement of Alexandria, 

149; see " Scriptures," and 

" Canon." 
Nice, council of, 120, 223, 229, 

236, 353- 
Notha, Eusebius on, 209 seq. 

Old Testament: read in syna- 



gogues, 23, 337; received by 
apostles, 24-26; rejected by 
Marcion, 104; received by En- 
cratites, 132; uncertainty of 
its Canon, 41, 152, 199, 337; 
see " Scriptures." 

Ophite heresy, 98. 

Origen: his commentary on 
John, 53; on inspiration, 172; 
on Hebrews, 179; omits Jude, 
197; on the Gospel according 
to the Hebrews, 217; on Bar- 
nabas, 229; on the Shepherd, 
235; on the Apocalypse, 295; 
cited, 81, 166, 194, 249, 311. 

Orthodoxy, definition of, 95. 

Paraclete, Montanistic doctrine 
of, 113, 114. 

Papias: prefers tradition to 
Scripture, 58; on the "peri- 
cope" of John, 215; on Mat- 
thew, 217; cited, 123, 311, 312, 
314- 

Parousia, place of, 124. 

Paul, apostle: claims divine au- 
thority, 26 seq., 358; on rela- 
tion of law to gospel, 104; 
his attitude to Peter, 106. 

Peppuza, place of Parousia, 124. 

Peshito version, 128, 288. 

Peter: Apocalypse of, 152, 201, 
209, 231-233, 237, 311; Judg- 
ment of, 224; preaching of, 
209; Gospel of, 59, 21 1-2 14, 
250, 3"- 

Philadelphia Confession, 4, 381. 

Philadelphians, letter of Ignatius 

to, 38. 
Philippians, Polycarp's letter to, 

41 ; see " Epistles." 
Philo, his doctrine of the Logos, 

78. 
Philostorgius on the Canon, 

301. 
Phoenix, fable of, 228, 352. 
Photius, of Constantinople, 157. 



INDEX 



387 



Phrygia, 113, 124. 

" Pilgrim's Progress," 334, 359. 

Pius, bishop of Rome, 151, 161, 
164, 165, 317- 

Polycarp: letter of, to Philip- 
pians, 40, 64, 66; his cita- 
tion of Scripture, ibid.; and 
Irenaeus, 46; and Epistle of 
Jude, 196; cited, 90, 98, 108, 
141, 312. 

Popes, Eugenius IV, 380; Greg- 
ory VIII, 297; Innocent I, 
265, 345, 378; Gelasius, 266, 
379- 

Preaching, the, of Peter, 209. 

Priscilla (Prisca), 114, 124. 

Protestant: was Marcion a, 105; 
attitude to the Canon, 347. 

Protevangelium, 209. 

Provisional Canon: quoted by 
Tertullian, 125; Marcion a wit- 
ness to, 108. 

Reformation, and the Canon, 3 
seq., 263, 348. 

Regula ixdei, Tertullian on, 316. 

Revelation. See " Apocalypse." 

Rome, bishops of: Boniface, 263, 
276; Pius, 151, 161, 164, 165, 
317; see "Popes." 

Rome, Church of: and the 
Canon, 8, 9, 108, no, 268, 
345. 346; language of, 155; 
Tertullian on, 255 seq.; medi- 
ocrity of, 344. 

Rufinus: on First Clement, 227; 
on the Shepherd, 237, 377; on 
the Canon, 249, 377. 

Savoy Declaration, the, 4. 

Scriptures, the: supreme au- 
thority of, 3, 4; inspiration of, 
5» 47, S3, 172; what constitute 
the, 6; the O. T., 23; read in 
the synagogues, 24, 337; pub- 
lic reading of, 25, 175, 181; 
apostolic writings recognized 
as, 29 seq., 41, 42; quotations 



of by early Fathers, 30, 36, 
37, 43; growing appreciation 
°f, 39 5 relation of church to 
45, 46; allegorical interpreta 
tion of, 52, 53; how preserved 
86; how used by heretics, 95 
96; Fathers on authority of 
173, seq. 

Serapion, on Gospel of Peter 
211, 250. 

Shepherd, the: regarded as Scrip 
ture, 59; relation to the Ro 
man Church, 161-163; its anti 
Montanism, 158, 180; its rela 
tion to James, 184, 185, i88 ; 
191; Origen on, 166; Athana 
sius on, 224, 372; described 
and discussed, 233-239; com 
pared to the " Pilgrim's Prog 
ress," 238; cited, 13, 88, 209 
278, 283, 307, 317, 318, 3i9 : 
320, 342, 352. 

Silence, the argument from, 34 

Simon Magus, knowledge of 
N. T„ 98. 

Smith, Joseph, his " inspiration,' 
358. 

Sozomen, on the Apocalypse of 
Peter, 231. 

Stephen, the Martyr, 89. 

Stromata, the, of Clement, 229. 

Synagogue, the, and the Scrip- 
tures, 24, 337. 

Syriac version, 86. 

Swedenborg, his " inspiration," 
358. 

Tatian: his Diatessaron, 69, 140, 
218-220; and the Encratites, 
132; an influential presbyter, 
249. 

Taylor, Dr. George B., and his 
book, 159. 

Tertullian: bitter invectives of, 
97; his chiliastic ideas, 124; 
his testimony to the Pro- 
visional Canon, 125, 147 seq., 
342; on Hebrews, i79» Z07; 



3 88 



INDEX 



approves Jude, 195, 198; on 
literary forgeries, 221; on the 
Shepherd, 234, 243, 307, 318, 
320; on synods, 244, 258; his 
"dictatorial I," 252; a "lumi- 
nous passage " from, 254 seq.; 
his use of Latin versions, 290- 
292; on Gospel of Mark and 
Luke, 314; on the rule of 
faith, 316; on Enoch, 318; on 
Second Peter, 318; cited, 99, 
ioo, 102, 107, 108, 109, 114, 
115, 116, 117, 129, 143, 172, 
191, 249. 

Theodore of Mopsuestia, 128, 
180, 191, 197. 

Theodoret: and Tatian's Diates- 
saron, 219, 251; does not 
quote Apocalypse, 128, 197. 

Theophilus, of Antioch: on in- 
spiration, 49; on the Canon, 
146, 148, 196. 

Tischendorf, discovers Codex 
Sinaiticus, 276 seq., 280. 

Tobit, quoted by Polycarp, 41. 

Trent, Council of, on the Canon, 
263, 268, 347. 



Trullan Council on the Canon, 

264, 265, 380. 
Two Ways, the, 224; see " Di- 

dache." 

Ulfilas, version of, 301. 

Valentinus, heresy of, 99. 

Versions: Aramaic, 288 seq.; 
Latin, early, 290 seq.; Jerome's 
Vulgate, 293, 296 seq.; Coptic, 
294 seq.; Armenian, 299; Ethi- 
opic, 300; Gothic, 301. 

Vienne and Lyons, churches of, 
88. 

Virgin birth, idea of, 79. 

Vulgate, the: includes Apocry- 
pha, 268; Jerome's, 296 seq.; 
influence of on the Canon, 
298. 

Westminster Confession, 4, 270, 

33*- 
Wisdom, book of, 152, 372. 

Zephyrinus, bishop of Rome, 158. 
Zwingli, on the Apocalypse, 345. 



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